


It's Hard to Tell Sometimes

by gallopingmelancholia



Series: We're doing our best, fuck off [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, Declarations Of Love, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, First Kiss, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:57:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21801766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallopingmelancholia/pseuds/gallopingmelancholia
Summary: “Hey, uh, guys?”They all look up. Ben is holding Bev’s hands. Tears run down his cheeks.“You’re all, um, seeing this, right?”Mike furrows his brow. “Seeing what?”“This. The hospital.”“Yeah, Richie. We’re all here,” Bill says.Stan isn’t here.“Like, this one’s real?”“What do you mean, Rich?” Ben says.Bev gasps in understanding. “Oh, honey. What did you see in the deadlights?”****Eddie survives and moves in with Richie and they're very soft.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: We're doing our best, fuck off [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769347
Comments: 33
Kudos: 902





	It's Hard to Tell Sometimes

Richie has always existed in these lights. Every nightmare he’s ever had swirls around him. He can’t move. He’s not sure if he’s breathing, though he must be, if he’s still feeling fear. Is it fear that paralyzes him, or something else? Is it the clown? It must be the clown. Dimly, he recognizes the specter of Pennywise at the edges of each of the horrific images flashing across his consciousness. Bev drowning in blood. Stan sinking into a bathtub of blood. Bill hanging from a storm drain by one hand over a never-ending drop that will surely kill him. Eddie impaled, blood spurting from his mouth as he’s lifted from Richie’s side. Ben’s intestines torn out, wrapped around his neck. Mike trapped in a burning building while the Losers sit passively outside looking in. Bill decapitated. Bev decapitated. Mike decapitated. Eddie decapitated. Stan’s head sprouting spider legs and climbing up Richie’s legs and torso, aiming for his eyes. Eddie’s headless body sitting up and reaching out for him, for Richie. Bill dressed in a yellow raincoat, his arm torn off. Ben hit with an exploding bullet right in his eye. Bev being strangled and raped by a faceless man. Mike hanging from a noose wrapped around a tree limb, his body on fire. Eddie sliced in half, his torso falling off and hitting the floor with an obscene squelch. Paul Bunyan trampling Bill underfoot like Godzilla. The wet thud when Stan hits the sidewalk after jumping from the top of the Empire State Building. Bev thrashing in the quarry while Bill holds her head underwater. Eddie’s head collapsing in on itself. Eddie’s chest with a hole as big as a cannonball in it. Eddie riddled with bullets. Eddie with an axe buried in his head. And through it all, Richie drowning. Richie unable to move. Unable to call out. Unable to help.

Somewhere on the edge of his mind he recognizes that he’s hit the ground, that someone above him is screaming. He opens his eyes, and there’s Eddie. He’s got pride shining out of his eyes. “I did it, man, I got It!”

And then, just like Richie saw, Eddie is impaled and lifted away, blood spraying from his mouth and chest. Richie can only whimper Eddie’s name before Eddie is thrown like a floppy dummy in a Monty Python sketch. Everyone screams. Richie scrambles to Eddie’s side. Other stuff happens, he’s sure of it, but all he can focus on is Eddie, stopping Eddie’s bleeding, calming him down, trying not to burst into tears when Eddie gives him one last “I fucked your mom” joke, since he knows Eddie is trying to calm him down too.

The other Losers force him to finish the ritual, to bully the clown into nothingness and crush his heart in their hands. He does it. It feels good. He briefly forgets that Eddie is bleeding out. When he remembers, he feels guilty. He immediately returns to Eddie’s side.

Eddie is dead. The world is falling down around Richie holding Eddie’s body in his arms. The Losers force Richie upstairs, into the world beyond Neibolt house as it collapses in on itself. They jump in the quarry, and softly speculate on what Eddie would do if he were with them. Then they leave, and everyone forgets. Richie returns to the Kissing Bridge and re-carves the initials R+E into the weathered wood, but it vanishes. He does it again. The wood heals itself. There is no memorial to Eddie. His body rots in the city’s sewers, along with the moldering corpses of hundreds of children. Everyone will forget.

Richie comes to with tears on his face. Cold, wet concrete stains his back. Eddie is bent over him, shouting in triumph. Richie pulls Eddie down and to the side, but he’s not quick enough. Eddie’s arm is torn off. He bleeds out while the Losers bully the clown to death. “Honey, he’s dead,” Bev says, and then he’s being dragged away. Richie has to leave him behind. The quarry. The Kissing Bridge. No memorial.

Richie comes to. Eddie is over him again, yelling again. Richie bolts upright, pulls Eddie and rolls. A pincer-like claw slams down on them, breaking Richie’s spine, instantly paralyzing him. Now he is the one left behind, screaming as the other Losers abandon him.

Richie comes to. Eddie looks down at him, screaming and smiling. Richie grabs Eddie’s shoulders and rolls back, digging his foot into Eddie’s stomach and flipping Eddie over his head like he’s in a karate film. Eddie breaks his neck on landing. They leave him behind. The Kissing Bridge is gone entirely, replaced with a steel bridge with no graffiti whatsoever.

Richie comes to. Eddie is overhead. “I did it!” Richie reaches up and caresses Eddie’s face, Eddie leans down, and this time they kiss while they’re both impaled. They’re both left behind, their blood pooling together as they lie in each other’s arms.

Richie comes to. Eddie, seen from below, drips sewage water onto Richie’s face. Smiling and hollering about killing It. Richie sobs from the familiarity. Eddie’s impaled. Richie refuses to leave him, even after bullying the clown. They stanch the flow of blood and drag him upstairs. Eddie’s wounds disappear, just like the carvings in Ben’s stomach did when Bev broke the mirror. They jump and splash in the quarry. Richie takes Eddie to the Kissing Bridge. Eddie kisses Richie tenderly, then stabs him through the chest. He kicks Richie into the water.

Richie comes to. Eddie’s face above his is jubilant, right until It’s claw pierces his chest and splashes blood all over Richie’s face. He gets thrown. Richie receives his words like a priest administering last rites: “I fucked your mom.” ( _I love you_.) They bully the clown to death and feel the sinews of his heart under their fingernails. Eddie still breathes. Richie, Ben, and Mike carry Eddie up with them as Neibolt house falls down around them. Eddie dies in the ambulance.

Richie comes to. Eddie is impaled again. Thrown again. “I fucked your mom” again. Richie refuses to leave Eddie’s side. The two of them make a break for the exit while the other Losers bully the clown to death. They make it up to Neibolt Street and the house falls down around the other Losers. Ben, Bev, Bill, and Mike don’t make it out. Eddie bleeds out. Richie is alone.

Richie comes to. Eddie is impaled and thrown. Eddie explains that they have to make the clown feel small, and then Richie and Eddie stumble towards the exit. The house falls down, but the Losers get out. They flag down a car, throw out the driver, and Mike careens the car down the road to the hospital, Richie clinging to Eddie in the backseat, his tears falling onto Eddie’s face. Eddie’s breath comes in ragged, shallow wheezes, worse than any of the anxiety attacks he had as a kid. The blood from Eddie’s chest wound seeps into Richie’s jeans and the leather of the car seats. The emergency room trauma team takes Eddie away from them.

Somehow, this feels different. Richie registers that time feels different. In all the times he’s watched Eddie get impaled before, he’s never made it to the emergency room. He’s never noticed the smells emanating from him and the other Losers as they sit in the waiting room. This time he allows himself to hope.

“Hey, uh, guys?”

They all look up. Ben is holding Bev’s hands. Tears run down his cheeks.

“You’re all, um, seeing this, right?”

Mike furrows his brow. “Seeing what?”

“This. The hospital.”

“Yeah, Richie. We’re all here,” Bill says.

_Stan isn’t here._

“Like, this one’s real?”

“What do you mean, Rich?” Ben says.

Bev gasps in understanding. “Oh, honey. What did you see in the deadlights?”

Richie gets halfway through a shrug and then breaks down sobbing. Bev is out of her chair like a rocket and wraps her arms around Richie. The others flock to him as well, surrounding him with love. He feels their still-beating hearts, their breath on his face.

“How long did it take you to know what was real, when it was you?” Richie asks Bev.

“Until I left Derry for good,” Bev says.

“Fuck,” Richie says.

“Say something Pennywise wouldn’t know,” Mike says. “So we know he’s not in your head. Someone say something only the Losers would know about. Something Derry tried to take away but couldn’t.”

How could anyone possibly do that? Pennywise knew everything. That fucking clown knew him inside and out.

Bill finally says, “Once, when we were kids, before the other Losers, it was just you, me, and Stan. We were staying at my house. Georgie was just a little baby. My parents took us all outside, and we played around until it got dark, and then my mom said she had a surprise for us, and she pointed out a comet. We all lost our minds, we were so excited.”

And Richie remembers. The warmth in his chest. The sense of wonder. Throwing his arms around Bill and Stan’s shoulders while looking up at the sky. “We pretended to be astronauts for the next two weeks.”

Bill beams at him. “And again at Halloween. My parents dressed Georgie up as an alien when we went trick-or-treating.”

“That’s fucking adorable,” Ben whispers.

“I remember that,” Richie says, and he’s crying again, happy tears this time. They squeeze his hands and shoulders. He buries his face in Bill’s shoulder. “Thank god.”

Richie exhales shakily, then looks around himself and laughs wildly, startling the other people in the waiting room, a bunch of strangers keeping their distance from the five adults covered in raw sewage and copious amounts of blood. Richie claps a hand over his mouth and laughs it out.

“We’re a mess. Holy shit. We look terrible.”

“We smell terrible.”

“Eddie would be beside himself,” Bev says. Richie sobers quickly.

“Shit, you’re right.” He stands and walks to the nurse’s desk. “Eddie Kaspbrak. Is he still in surgery?”

“The chest wound? Yes, honey. Will be for a long time.”

“Good,” Richie says, and turns around.

“Good?” the nurse mouths.

“I’m going back to shower,” Richie says. “He can’t see us like this.”

No one says that he might not see any of them ever again. They don’t have to. Richie sees it on their faces.

“No, shut up, he’s going to be fine. People come back from worse shit all the time.”

“Sweetie,” Bev says so gently Richie feels his throat close up.

“I’m going. I’ll be back in half an hour. Does anyone want any food?”

“Honey, you are not OK to drive right now,” Bev says.

“I’ll go with him,” Mike says. “We should probably figure out whose car we stole.”

“Commandeered,” Bill says.

“Do you think the guy’s insurance will cover the bloodstains?” Richie asks, because he never knows when to shut the fuck up.

“I’ll take care of it,” Ben says _. Oh shit, that’s right. Ben’s loaded_. “We’ll stay here in case he wakes up,” Ben says. Good old Ben. Always trying to stay positive.

Mike and Richie speed all the way back to the hotel, at Richie’s insistence. The streets of Derry are deserted, more so than usual. Richie for one is grateful. Mike goes to take a shower in Bill’s room, preferring not to go back to his place above the library, for reasons related to Henry Bowers’s body on the floor with a hatchet buried in his head. Richie dimly wonders how they’re going to explain that one away. That’s a problem for some other time. Technically he could be tried for murder. Whatever. He’s got other shit to worry about.

He’s in and out of the shower in eight minutes, washed and shampooed twice, teeth brushed for good measure. Cleans his glasses off for two minutes. They’re still cracked, but he can see. Dressed in three. Another three minutes packing a change of clothes for Eddie. A soft hoodie, pajama pants. Warm socks. Phone charger.

He waits impatiently for Mike at the bottom of the stairs, then lets himself into Bill’s room and pounds on the bathroom door. He shouts over the sound of the shower that he’s going back to the hospital.

“I’ll be ten more minutes, I’ll drive you,” Mike says.

“Nope, no can do. I’ll call you when I get there safe.”

Mike sighs. Richie can barely hear him through the door, but he knows Mike sighs heavily. “The second you get there.”

“Of course! Love you!”

“I love you too, Richie,” Mike says warmly.

“That was fast,” Bill says as Richie runs into the waiting room.

“Did you hear anything? Is he OK?”

“We haven’t heard anything. It’s been like, twenty minutes,” Bev says.

“No news is good news,” Ben says.

“OK, is anyone hungry? I’m going to the caf.”

“Richie, babe, please sit down, you’re frantic,” Bev says. “Take a breather.”

“Yeah no, I’m not doing that,” Richie says. He can’t stress enough how much he needs to be distracted right now. “I need coffee and a fuckton of candy.”

“Rich. Honey,” Bill says as gently as possible.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, I’m going. I’ve gotta call Mike. Do you want me to tell him to bring you some new clothes?”

“Richie—“

“No, you should go shower, you’ll feel a million times better. I already do.”

Ben laughs hollowly. “Clearly.”

“Go in shifts, so someone’s always here. I’ll be back in five minutes. Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

Bill sighs. “I’d love a coffee. Cream and sugar.”

“You got it, Big Bill. I’m gonna put whiskey in mine.”

Bev smiles sadly. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“If you want, you know I can’t say no to you, Bevvie.”

Richie pats down his pockets, looking for his wallet. Did he lose it in the sewers? Did he even have it down there? He didn’t even think to find it before coming back. Good thing he didn’t get pulled over while speeding here. Ben discreetly hands him a few bills.

They walk quickly down the halls, Richie on the phone with Mike. Bev asks to speak to him once Richie says there’s no news.

“Uh, not great.” Mike says something else. “No, we’re waiting it out.” Another question from Mike. “Exactly. It figures.”

“Are you talking about me?” Richie asks.

Bev ignores him.

“Come on back, then the rest of us will go clean up. We’ll see you soon. I love you,” Bev finishes up. She hands Richie back his phone.

They load up on provisions, more than anyone’s asked for, at Richie’s insistence. He checks his phone constantly while Bev picks out her bagel and fruit and they’re waiting in line to pay. By the time they arrive back, Mike is there, and Ben and Bill are standing close, conferring.

“I got some for everyone,” Richie says, putting the coffee tray down on the table they’ve claimed for themselves.

“Thanks, Richie,” Mike says. “Go on, you three. We’ll hold down the fort.”

They leave. Richie eats a Snickers and a bag of gummy worms and downs a can of Coke after his coffee. Mike sits quietly, reading something on his phone. Richie looks over, and he’s got articles pulled up on punctured lungs and broken ribs. Richie looks away.

Eddie would probably know how likely he is to die from his injuries. Risk analysts know stuff like that, right?

“God, I hope it’s not infected,” Richie says out of the blue. “He’s always so worried about infection.”

“We can only wait and see,” Mike says.

Richie pulls out his own phone and plays one brightly colored game after another. He looks at his phone until his eyes blur. By then the others have returned, looking fresh and new. He goes to the gift shop and comes back with a bunch of Sudoku books, a few mass market paperbacks of some trashy detective stories, some headphones, and a yellow teddy bear wearing a tiny t-shirt that says “Get well soon!” on it. He tucks the bear into the chair by his side and settles in, chewing on the pen cap nervously and playing music, skipping most of the songs impatiently. He avoids thinking about the things he saw. He especially stays the fuck away from each and every death the Losers went through. How had Bev carried that around for so many years? It’s been four hours and he’s going nuts.

She was always stronger than him.

He paces when he needs to stretch his legs, which is about every ten minutes or so. The others sit quietly. Bill stares up at the TV. Ben is reading one of the books he bought.

He does a few more puzzles, then goes to the vending machine for more candy and some pretzels and another Coke. When the candy drops down from the vending machine rows, he hears again the thud of Stan hitting the pavement. It steals the breath right out of his lungs. He sits down again.

Mike tries to sleep. Bev leans against Ben’s shoulder, her eyes closed. Richie has never felt more wired in his life.

Finally, finally, finally, a doctor comes in. “Visitors for Edward Kaspbrak?”

Richie shoots up out of his chair, unconsciously grabbing the teddy bear and squeezing it so tightly he’s surprised the head doesn’t pop off.

“Is he OK? Is he alive?”

The doctor takes a calming breath, and says, “He’s alive. He’ll be in the ICU for the foreseeable future, but he’s alive, and stable.”

Richie sinks back into his chair and covers his face with his hands. He sobs so loudly he can’t hear the rest of what the doctor says. Ben rubs his back. Richie vaguely hears the words “peritonitis” “intestines” “internal bleeding” “fractures” “traumatic.”

“When can we see him?” Mike asks.

“He’s asleep, but we’ll send in a nurse when he wakes up. I wouldn’t expect it until tomorrow morning at the earliest. He’s been through quite a lot, eleven hours of surgery, and is on a lot of pain medication.”

“Will he survive? What’s the percentage? He’ll want to know the probability, he’s a risk analyst,” Richie says.

The doctor hesitates. “The chances he makes it through the night are 65%.”

“That’s not bad!” Richie says even as his heart drops to somewhere in the region of his feet. The others look at him pitifully. “Tell him we’re here and we love him. Tell him the Losers are here and we’ll see him soon.”

The doctor nods.

“Thank you, Dr. Singh,” Ben says. The doctor nods, and leaves them.

“Thank god,” Bill says, and they all sigh.

“I knew he’d make it,” Richie says. They all tactfully refuse to point out that he spent twelve hours very clearly not thinking Eddie would make it.

“Should we call his wife?” Mike says.

“No,” Richie practically yells.

“Not until we see him and asks if that’s what he wants,” Ben says.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Richie says. No one meets his eye.

_Oh shit. They all know. Smooth, Richie._

“Who wants to go back to the hotel to get some sleep?” Bev asks. “And who will stay with Richie?”

Mike volunteers to stay. “Have you had a good night’s rest in the past 27 years?” Bill asks. “No. I’ll stay. You three go conk out, we’ll stay here and see you in the morning.”

It’s only 8pm, but Richie thinks he could sleep for five days, but at the same time knows he won’t be able to sleep properly until he hears Eddie’s voice again.

Bill leaves for ten minutes and comes back with a couple of pillows and blankets. Richie isn’t sure if the hospital usually provides those for people in the waiting rooms or if Bill just sweet-talked someone on staff into handing them out, but he’s grateful. They sit in adjacent chairs and lean into each other. Bill slips his hand into Richie’s.

“You get first visit,” Bill says, after some time has passed.

Richie thinks he should put up some token protest (“What, no, you’re Big Bill, you’re the leader, you go first,”) but he’s too tired to pretend anymore. So he just says, “Thank you.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Bill, in all the years you’ve known me and in all the billions of words you’ve heard me spit out, have you ever known me to actually say anything? Of course I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Bev was in the deadlights too. She’ll be able to relate.”

“Noted.”

Bill clears his throat. “Uh, and Ben spent his entire life in love with a childhood friend, if you want to talk to him about that, too.”

“Shut the fuck up, Bill.”

Bill does, and Richie squeezes his hand. He’s never really had this kind of closeness, holding hands with another man, his head following the motion of Richie’s chest as he breathes in and out. He’d never really dated much at all; no one ever caught his interest. He kept waiting for it to feel right, to get a rush of lust and affection by looking at a woman he really cared about, but it didn’t happen. He’d “experimented” (his words) with guys in his twenties and a few times since, but he always quickly skipped over the possibility of being actually, properly gay. It was in the back of his mind, lurking, not entirely forgotten; its presence always made him feel queasy, but he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t until he got back to Derry that he figured out the reason he felt like throwing up when he thought about being gay was that Pennywise had weaponized that fear against him, and he buried it when he left Derry, along with everything else. But it was still there, waiting to be rediscovered.

Seeing Eddie again after 27 years just made the feelings come torpedoing back. It’s 2016, he shouldn’t be terrified of being gay anymore, but he still feels like he’s doing something wrong. His stomach hasn’t settled in three days, between, in order of magnitude, the demon clown shit, killing Bowers with a hatchet to the head, the fluttering warmth every time Eddie looks at him or does something adorable, and the sucker-punch of fear every time he thinks about someone finding out. Bill knows. Bev probably knows. Mike definitely knows. He wouldn’t put it past Ben, either. They probably discussed it in the car on the way back, with disgusting pity on their faces. Poor Richie, in love with a dead straight man.

They love him anyway. They all said so while hugging him before leaving for the night. Bill is holding his hand and sleeping against his shoulder this very moment. Maybe now instead of freaking out about Eddie nearly dying, he can freak out about being super gay instead.

Or he could just go to sleep.

Richie pulls off his glasses and slips them into his shirt pocket and folds the teddy bear under his arm. Now that he knows Eddie is out of the woods—relatively, but Eddie’s stronger than anyone else, even he himself, realizes—he falls asleep like a candle snuffing out.

The caffeine wakes him up a few hours later. He shuffles down the hallway to the restroom, disoriented. When he returns, Bill is still sleeping, his head thrown back, his mouth open. Richie suppresses the urge to take a selfie with him. He sits back down but doesn’t fall back asleep, just rests his eyes. He thinks about the warmth he feels when the Losers say they love each other. Now that they’re together again, they’re not going to let anyone doubt it. Richie knows this won’t change.

He wishes Stan were here. Him and Bill and Stan, just like it used to be.

He hadn’t thought about that comet in 30 years, and just like that, a sense of home returns to him.

He replays everything he saw in the deadlights in his mind. Over and over. Exposure therapy, he hopes. If he thinks about it enough of his own free will, maybe it’ll hurt less. Maybe he won’t have nightmares.

He ends up crying silently, tears falling down into the teddy bear he's brought up to his chin.

It’s 5am when a doctor enters the waiting room. Richie looks up at him. He’s sure his eyes are still red.

“Eddie?”

“He’s awake and lucid. Do you want to see him?”

“Show the way, doc.”

Richie calms his breathing, which is suddenly erratic, as they walk down the hallway.

“Phone off,” the doctor says. Richie complies. The doctor leaves him at the door. Richie knocks softly.

Eddie looks terrible. There’s a tube down his throat and his skin is yellow from the shit they put on him to disinfect him while in surgery. His cheek is bandaged, and Richie can tell just by looking at his torso that there’s a fuckton of bandages wrapped around it. The machine breathes for him, and his heart rate is surely too slow. He can’t even fucking move. He’s the best thing Richie’s ever seen.

He croaks something that sounds like “Richie,” and winces. Richie steps carefully up to the bedside and tousles Eddie’s hair.

“Hey, Spaghetti Head.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose but his eyes go so soft Richie thinks he’s going to have a heart attack at the feelings they draw from him.

“It’s good to see you, man.”

The edges of Eddie’s mouth rise up in a smile. He opens his mouth and tries to speak but only a weird gargling noise comes out.

“Dude you’ve got shit down your throat, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll do all the talking.”

Eddie lifts his eyebrows in such a way that Richie knows he’s saying, “Like fucking always.”

First things first. Not, _I love you, I have since I was 12,_ but, “They killed It. He’s gone now.”

Eddie shifts his head back against the bed, sighing in relief. He winces again at the pain. He shouldn’t be in pain. He should be so high on morphine he’s numb. Richie thinks of that scene from that movie with Debra Winger, where Shirley MacLaine goes apeshit trying to get the nurses to give her daughter more painkillers. He’s tempted to do the same.

“We told them you were in a house when it collapsed and some PVC piping or rebar or something got you, so go with that if they ask. Ben actually made it sound plausible. He’s good with buildings, sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”

Eddie nods.

“Do you want us to call your wife?” Richie says, to get it over with.

Eddie shakes his head no. Richie feels a sense of relief. “Hey, that’s cool, man. It can wait.”

Eddie’s eyebrows furrow. God, Richie loves those eyebrows.

“Bill’s out in the waiting room. I can go get him.”

Eddie tilts his chin. _No, not yet_.

Richie reaches out, abruptly pulls back, goes to the sink in the corner of the room, washes his hands thoroughly, and returns to the bedside. He reaches out again and grasps Eddie’s hand, the one without the monitor clasped around his finger. He rubs his thumb across Eddie’s knuckles, and Eddie shuts his eyes. Tears run down his cheeks, splashing his hospital gown, and Richie finds himself crying for a record 26th time that day. (He hadn’t actually counted.)

“We all made it out. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to bounce back like a tennis ball.”

Eddie tries to lift his arms but can’t without wincing. The rib spreader. Richie wipes his tears away for him. Eddie smiles weakly and softly squeezes Richie’s hand. Richie thinks back to the last time he held Eddie’s hand. Arm wrestling at the Chinese place. Anything for an excuse to touch Eddie. Now he doesn’t care. He’ll touch Eddie as much as Eddie’s comfortable with. There’s no reason to hide his affection anymore, not when Eddie almost died.

“I’m not sure how long they’ll let me stay, Eds,” he says. Eddie just squeezes his hand again, as if to tell Richie he wants him to stay as long as he can.

Richie’s got so much to say to Eddie but nothing to talk about. “I beat that Pizza Rat game on my phone while we were waiting for you to get out of surgery,” he finally says. Eddie gives him a thumbs-up. “I think Ben and Bev are a thing now,” Richie says. A big smile from Eddie. “Right? It’s very cute. Bill snores, just like he did when we were kids. Oh, I brought you some comfy clothes. And your charger. I’m not sure where your phone is, but I’ll find it for you. We tried to fill out your paperwork but didn’t know a lot of the answers, so if you have any actual allergies you should like, write them down or something. You can type them out on my phone, if you want.” Richie turns it back on and holds the phone out to him. Eddie takes it, opens up on the Notes app, and spends a few minutes laboriously typing with his one free hand, the monitor getting in the way. He could easily let go of Richie's hand to make it easier, but he doesn't, and Richie's not going to let go if Eddie's not. He hands the phone back to Richie. It reads “ur mom sux cocks in hell.” Richie laughs so loudly he’s surprised a doctor doesn’t come running into the room. Eddie is grimacing because laughing hurts his chest, but Richie knows he’s pleased at the response.

“Fuck,” Richie says, a few minutes of hard laughter later, wiping his eyes. “I needed that. None of those fuckers out there are funny at all. It’s been so boring without you.”

The doctor comes back in. It’s time for him to leave. They’ll get another chance to visit in a few hours. Richie bends down to give Eddie a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, Eddie. We all do. We’ll see you soon.”

Bill’s awake when he returns. Richie updates him on Eddie’s condition, shows him the note Eddie typed out for him. Bill snorts in amusement and sighs fondly.

“God, I’m relieved. I’d never have forgiven myself if he hadn’t made it.”

“I’d never have forgiven Mike, honestly,” Richie says. “He started it.”

“He brought us all back together.”

“Yeah, that’s true. That makes up for it. We should do something nice for him. Oh shit, we should get the dead guy out of his library.”

“Shit,” Bill says. “Whoops. Forgot about that.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“A dead white guy in a black man’s building? That will not be fine.”

“Well he didn’t kill Bowers, I did, so, it’ll be fine.”

“Thank you for doing that, Richie. You saved Mike’s life.”

“I’d do it again, too, for Mike, or you, or any one of us. I always hated that son of a bitch.”

“Me too.”

“But for real though, we should probably call the cops or something.”

“It’s Derry, everyone will find a way to overlook it.”

The man had a point. “He’s probably already taken care of it. Seems like he’s always prepared.”

“He had to grow up quicker than all of us.”

Poor Mike.

Well, poor Losers Club in general.

Poor Eddie, especially, at the moment.

“I genuinely think things’ll be OK after this,” Bill says. “I think the stain is gone.”

“God I hope you’re right.”

“I wish Stan were here.”

“Me too,” Richie says, his voice quiet.

“I get it, though. Stan was always—“

“Yeah.”

“It just sucks.”

“Fuck, it really does suck.”

They sit in silence for a little while. Bill hugs the teddy bear close to his chest and rests his chin on its head.

“This bear does actually make me feel better,” he says at length.

“You can keep him. No, I take that back. He’s mine. You can borrow him.”

“Thanks, man, I’m touched.”

*

When the cafeteria opens up they head down and drink some coffee and eat rubbery scrambled eggs. Bill texts the other Losers and tell them Richie got to see Eddie, that visiting hours are short and they won’t all get to see Eddie at the same time. Richie knows that Bill is saying that he doesn’t have to spend all of his time at the hospital, but where the fuck else is he going to go? The only thing he cares about in Derry is hooked up to a breathing machine and can’t go anywhere. Eventually he’ll have to go back to his shitty stand-up career and try to salvage what’s left of his reputation, but for now he sent an email to his manager to cancel all of his upcoming commitments until further notice because of a family emergency.

Mike texts back to say that Bowers was gone when he went back to the library. Everything else was still there, even Richie’s puke, but Bowers was gone.

Problem solved, then.

One less thing to worry about.

Neat.

The other Losers arrive during the next block of visiting hours. They go in two by two and split the time evenly, but Richie gets more time with Eddie. No one speaks about it. Richie’s grateful that they don’t.

Eddie’s healing up better than the doctors thought. Maybe the hypochondria was good in that it forced Eddie to take care of his body. Richie couldn’t even run 50 yards without hurting himself. He’s sore from sleeping in a chair, for fuck’s sake. His body’s fueled on candy and Doritos and wouldn’t know how to stitch itself back together. But Eddie gets vaccinated and shit. He takes vitamins.

He comes off the breathing machine on the second day. He gets a nasal cannula instead, which means he can talk again. Richie doesn’t cry when he hears Eddie say his name for the first time, but he wants to. He’s moved out of ICU on the fourth day, and his insurance is good enough for him to get his own room, which means visitors can come and go whenever they want. Richie buys a box set of _Game of Thrones_ and they watch it to pass the time while Eddie heals. It makes one of the nurses exceptionally uncomfortable. The other always has one eye on Eddie and the other on the screen. She openly watches it at the Red Wedding episode and later cheers when Ramsay Bolton dies.

The nurses love Richie. They didn’t even know his comedy until Richie let his full name slip and they Googled him. He tells them it’s not safe for work, and that he didn’t write it anyway so it’s not any good, and they agree but in a nice way, like they think he can do better. They eventually find out who Bill is, too, and are suitably impressed. (Local boy makes good.) They don’t quite get what Ben and Bev do, but everyone likes Ben and Bev. They know Mike, of course. At first they’re wary, having heard stories about the weird black library guy, but he wins them over. The man’s a charmer.

And Eddie heals enough to be released.

The doctors and nurses automatically give Richie the information on how to take care of Eddie’s wounds and physical therapy exercises he can do once he heals enough. Richie doesn’t correct them or say that Eddie’s going to go back to his wife. It’s nice to pretend.

When Richie finally helps Eddie out of the wheelchair and into his car, Mike gives him shoulder pats and handshakes and “I love you”s galore (no hugs for Eddie, not until the giant hole in his chest completely scars over and his ribs aren’t so broken). The others have gone by now, back to pick up the pieces or start anew. Mike waits a few days longer, to finish wrapping up his life. He’s going to travel. First to Florida, like he promised himself as a kid, then who knows where. He doesn’t get paid well as a librarian, but he’s been saving up.

Richie takes Eddie back to the hotel. (He’d checked out a month ago, a few days after Eddie was admitted to the hospital. All of his and Eddie’s shit was packed into his car. He’d been sleeping at the hospital and showering at Mike’s, after all, no sense in paying for a hotel room.)

They get a room with two twin beds. Eddie said it was necessary, so Richie could change his bandages and help him get up to piss. Richie’s glad for it. He’s gotten used to sleeping in the same room as Eddie, hearing the wheezy breathing get less wheezy as time went on. (Eddie’s got a new inhaler. This one’s got actual medicine in it, steroids to help his lungs heal. He doesn’t use it as frequently as he should.) He waits until dinner is over and they’re sitting in their respective beds to bring it up.

“So, uh, does your wife know--?”

“Myra knows I’m here and that I was in an accident.”

“Oh.” A pause. “And she like, didn’t come?”

“I asked her not to.”

“Uh. OK. Why?”

“Because I wanted a divorce.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Rich, you’ve been with me constantly for the past, like, month, how did you not know this?”

“I was avoiding the subject! I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable! I was being sensitive to your feelings!”

That was only partly true. He was avoiding the subject because the thought of Eddie returning to his mom-wife ripped his heart out.

“Wait, when did you talk to her?”

“Like, the second they took that shit out of my throat.”

“You asked your wife for a divorce while you were still in the ICU?”

“Yeah, well, getting shish-kebabed puts shit in perspective.”

“Wait, so are you like, talking to lawyers?”

“Yeah and we had a prenup, it’ll take like, six months tops.”

Richie’s not sure what his emotions are doing but he’d like them to stop so he can breathe.

“Fuck, Eds, that’s huge. I mean, that’s great. Your wife was huge.”

Eddie rolls his eyes in a way Richie interprets as violent. “Beep beep, Richie.”

“I’m sorry.” (He’s not, though. He’s trying really hard not to smile like a loon.) “That was out of line. She was your wife. And your mom.”

“I’m aware. I was waiting for you to bring that up.”

“Like, how did you not realize that you married your mom?”

“Because my mom died while I was away from Derry and I couldn’t go back for the funeral so I forgot all the shit she put me through, same way I forgot all of you guys. And I didn’t talk about her in therapy so I never remembered or made the connection.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“Of course I’m in therapy. You think someone who spent their entire life thinking they were sick wouldn’t go to therapy, just to be safe?”

Huh. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Besides, Myra made me go.”

Richie wasn’t even going to touch that one. “So was she really like your mom? Controlling and all that?”

“She…she worried about me. She wanted me to be safe. And healthy. We did a bunch of those fad diet things. She always wanted to go to the gym but we never really got around to going together. Like, couples yoga classes, salsa dancing classes. Shit like that.”

“So yes?”

“Yes, OK? She was exactly like my mom, identical down to the dress size, and what a size she was,” Eddie says bitterly, anticipating another joke from Richie.

“We didn’t hate her because she was fat, Eds. We hated her because she was mean.”

“Yeah, well, she’s dead, and Myra’s going to be gone soon, so it’s fine, whatever.” Eddie’s cheek is healed, so there's no bandage to hide the way his muscles clench in his jaw when he's upset.

“So what are you going to do? If you’re not going back to her? Are you going back to New York?”

“Well, I’m on sick leave. I’m probably gonna quit that job. But I haven’t really decided yet. I need the health insurance.”

“Come to LA with me.” It’s out of his mouth before he even has time to consider what the fuck he’s saying.

Eddie looks taken aback. _Well, in for a penny, in for a pound_ , Richie thinks. _Time to double down_.

“I’m serious. Come to LA with me. I’ve got a spare room. Your divorce will go through and you can sit on the beach and complain about germs and I’ll change your bandages and when you’re able to walk on your own you can get a place and a job and insurance and figure out what you’re going to do from there.”

“Richie, I can’t ask you to do that, you’ve done so much already.”

“I haven’t done shit, I’ve just sat around watching TV with you.”

“You slept on the visitor’s chair for _weeks._ ”

“Well—“

“The others all went back to their lives, but you stayed—“

That familiar stab of fear. _He knows._ “I wasn’t going to make you leave the hospital by yourself, are you crazy?” _He knows, oh god, he knows._ “You’re my best friend and I want you to come with me. You’d do the same for me.”

 _Would he, though? Does he even care about you at all?_ That voice in his head sounded an awful lot like Pennywise, he realizes. He pushes it down.

“I’m sure they have extremely boring risk analyst jobs in LA too.”

Eddie still looks skeptical. He’s fidgeting with the strings of his hoodie, his eyebrows furrowed adorably.

“Come on, dude, as a favor to me, for my peace of mind. I don’t want to leave you alone.” _Don’t leave me here alone._ “I’ll charge you rent if it makes you feel more independent.”

“Thanks, Richie,” he says quietly.

Richie fist pumps the air. “Fuck yeah! Roomies! The college dorm experience we never got to have.”

“I went to college,” Eddie says.

“But your roommate wasn’t a handsome devil like me?”

“Pfft, someone’s confident. He could’ve been super hot, for all you know. He could’ve looked like Ben.”

“Please. Hotter than me? Look at this hairline.”

Eddie smiles. “You’re right, he wasn’t hot. I was the hot one.”

“I know you were,” Richie says. “You’re still going to be the hot one, let’s be real.”

“Mhm,” Eddie agrees. “Chicks dig scars.” He gestures to his entire torso.

“Can’t confirm,” Richie says.

“I hear they also go wild for guys who have to take sponge baths and cry the whole time from the pain.”

“Bro, that was one time, you’ve got to let that go. Forgive yourself.”

“Meh. I don’t even want any chicks to go wild for me right now, man.”

 _Tread lightly, Richie._ “Like, none at all? Not even--? Like, what are you saying? Do you want dudes to go wild for you?”

Eddie goes very still. “No one. At the moment.”

Richie desperately wants to ask more questions but he can’t breathe and his heart would shoot out of his throat like a cobra’s venom if he opened his mouth.

“Between the injuries and the rediscovered childhood trauma and the brand new adult trauma and the divorce, like, I don’t know, man, I don’t need any of that right now,” Eddie continues.

“Right,” Richie says. “Right.”

Richie does something extremely uncharacteristic and thinks before he speaks. A very long pause follows.

“Well I don’t have anyone going wild for me at the moment either so it’ll just be a bachelor pad. Until further notice.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Two bros. Just guys being dudes.”

Eddie just stares at him. Richie is looking at the ceiling instead.

*

They drive to LA. Eddie doesn’t need an oxygen tank anymore but he’s _not_ risking flying with a lung healing from a puncture. Air pressure needs to be constant. Like, come on. It’s a very uncomfortable ride for them both. Mostly for Eddie, considering how much more exhausting it is to sit in one place all day when you can’t stretch out and you’ve got a giant hole in your chest. He uses the teddy bear Richie bought as a neck pillow.

Eventually they’ll—he’ll. Eddie. Eddie will-- have to go back to NYC to get all of his stuff, but he trusts Myra enough not to sell or destroy any of it. He doesn’t even own much of value—all of his assets are like, stocks and a pension and shit. (He’s explaining this to Richie, who is pretty sure Myra’s going to torch everything and burn the apartment building down and go out in a blaze of glory like Mr. Rochester’s first wife. The only reason Richie knows what happens to Bertha Rochester is that they had to read _Jane Eyre_ in eighth grade and they both spent the entire quarter whining about it. Stan liked the book.)

It takes them about four days to drive cross-country because Richie is being cautious and also because it’s kinda the best time they’ve had in 27 years or so. They bicker about music a lot, eat not-great food, and stay in cheap motels. Richie is one of those people who read the billboards aloud when he doesn’t have anything else to say. Eddie refuses to go to any of the dumb roadside attractions Richie excitedly points out. (No, not even the meteor crater in Arizona.)

On the third day they’re bored enough that Eddie forces Richie to play his comedy specials in order to point out exactly why the material sucks and how he knew Richie didn’t write his own shit. (Yes, he’d watched Richie’s stand-up in the 10 years or so since Richie started being big enough to land TV gigs. No, he hadn’t realized it was his childhood best friend at the time. No, he hadn’t laughed at any of the jokes. Yes, he still kept watching it, don’t ask him why.) Richie has never been so uncomfortable in his life, especially because Eddie is right and he was a hack and he didn’t like the love of his life pointing it out to him in excruciating detail.

“Like, come on, Richie, you’re better than this Dane Cook garbage. You’re so much funnier than these jokes.”

“Fuck off, no I’m not.”

Eddie turns to look at him incredulously. “Are you serious? I just gave you a compliment. I fucking believe in you and know you are good enough to write your own shit and make people love your stuff and you’re just gonna blow that off? Come on, man.”

Richie says nothing.

“I’m being sincere, dude. You’re talented enough to make some of this garbage work but it’s not _you._ ”

At that moment, the Stand-up Special Richie launched into a joke that started with, “So my girlfriend and I are in bed, right?”

The atmosphere in the car is so unbearable that Richie decides to change the subject. “It’s funny because I don’t even have a girlfriend. I haven’t had a girlfriend in like, 10 years.”

“Uh. That’s quite a dry spell.”

“I don’t even want a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, relationships are tough.”

Richie forces himself to lurch forward into the conversation like a wounded penguin. “I don’t really, uh, like women. That way. I don’t do any of this stuff. With women.”

Eddie’s eyes dart around the landscape and to Richie’s face and to the dashboard, then back to Richie’s face as he processes this. His mouth is slightly open, like he hasn’t decided what to say yet. It’s adorable but Richie also wants to die. “Wait, are you like--?”

“Coming out to you right now? Yes. Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not making it weird!” Eddie says, his voice a little higher-pitched than normal. _Ha, who’s uncomfortable now, bitch_? Richie thinks. “Um, thanks for telling me?”

“You’re the first person I’ve said it to.”

“Really?”

“In as many words. I’m gay. See. Did it again.”

“That’s great, dude. I’m honored.” Eddie is squirming. He cannot handle Richie being serious for even one second. It’s like watching a dog with three legs climb stairs. Richie is really enjoying watching Eddie try to be cool after the past three hours of roasting Richie’s comedy. He’s also massively relieved in a way he never thought he’d be, even just from saying it out loud. Tension he’d been carrying around for 30 years disappeared from his spine almost instantaneously once he realized Eddie wasn’t going to scream slurs at him.

“Do you like, want to talk about it?”

“Tell you all about my big gay journey? Nah dude, I won’t put you through that. I’ll save it for therapy.” Richie very much does not need to tell Eddie how prominently he features in Richie’s Big Gay Journey. One thing at a time.

Eddie looks relieved.

“Well, I’m proud of you, bro. That’s a huge thing to do. It’s brave.”

“Pffft. If I were brave I’d have done it years ago.”

“It’s never too late to try to be happy, dude.”

Richie nearly sobs. “Thanks, Eddie,” he says softly.

From Richie’s phone and through the car’s speakers, Stand-up Special Richie ends a punchline with “No homo.”

“Yes homo,” Richie whispers dramatically, and he and Eddie laugh so hard they have to pull over so Richie doesn’t lose control of the car.

Later, wiping tears away, Eddie bracing his hands against his sore stomach, he says, “OK, one more question about the gay thing, then we can just like, drop it until it comes up organically. Because it’s like a part of your life and I’m sure it’ll come up again but like, I don’t want to force you to talk about it if you’re not comfortable and I don’t want you to feel like it’s a weird thing and you can’t talk about it. But I’m curious.”

“Shoot.”

“Do the other Losers know?”

“I didn’t tell any of them. You’re the only one I told.”

“Right.”

“But Bill knows. I didn’t like, confirm it, but he kinda asked.”

“Bill was always pretty sharp.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Mike, either. He was always quiet but he knew what was up before the others did.”

“He’s pretty observant.”

“Stan would’ve figured it out. He was sensitive to shit like that.”

“What, other people’s feelings?”

“Yeah, shit like that. I wouldn’t know.”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything. OK, another question and then a comment.”

“Hit me.”

“Are you going to tell anyone else?”

“Fuck, man, I don’t know. Maybe. I feel pretty good about how it went with you.”

“Because it won’t kill your career, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’ll get a huge outpouring of support. Even on Twitter and you know it’s full of assholes. It’s not a thing to be ashamed of anymore. Not that it ever was. But, you know. The ‘80s.”

“I don’t know.”

“People love you, Rich. We want you to be happy.”

“Thanks, Eddie. What’s the comment?”

“I will only accept ‘I fucked your dad’ jokes out of your mouth from now on.”

“Eddie, your dad died when you were like five, I’m not joking about fucking your dad’s corpse.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Ugh, fine. OK can we listen to music now? I get it, my stand-up sucks.”

“Sure, let me find something,” Eddie says, and scrolls through Richie’s Spotify. The playlist he pulls up is the PRIDE channel. Richie takes a hand off the steering wheel to give him the finger when Diana Ross starts playing. Eddie laughs. Richie finds it difficult to stop himself from smiling, not that he tries very hard.

*

Richie’s place is nice. Nice in the way a small apartment in a big city is nice, not conspicuously nice in the way an upper class house in the Midwest would be. He’s got a spare bedroom that’s supposed to be for guests, but it’s also got a stationary bike in it, like it’s supposed to be a home gym too. The bike is clearly never used, but Eddie says it makes him think about all the times they rode bikes as kids. Maybe deep down Richie remembered that, even when his childhood memories were gone. Or maybe he just hates treadmills. Both are possible.

“You had someone come in and clean before we got here, didn’t you?” Eddie asks as Richie brings up their bags into the living room.

“What? No, I’m always this tidy.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re right, this is the nicest it’s ever looked since I moved in. But that’s OK, because you’re here now, and I’ll never have to clean again! You’re going to scrub every surface of this place within an inch of its life.”

“Dude, I’ve still got broken ribs, I can’t scrub shit.”

Richie groans. “Oh god, am I going to have to sanitize everything like four times a day?”

“Not four times. Only once a day.”

“You survived being impaled by a demon clown, household germs aren’t going to kill you.”

Eddie looks like he wants to argue but is already exhausted. “I guess. Whatever.”

“Your immune system gets better when you expose it to pathogens in small doses,” Richie says, pushing his luck.

“OK, Jesus, I won’t make you clean your apartment. I’ll just stay in my room the whole time.” And he starts limping towards his room, gingerly placing a hand on his chest, as if holding his organs in place.

Richie’s triumph lasts like four seconds. “Fine, I’ll clean as much as you want, just don’t quarantine yourself.”

Eddie straightens up immediately. “Haha! No backsies! You have to do it!”

“I can’t believe I fell for the wounded damsel trick. Goddammit,” Richie says.

“I’m not even a germaphobe anymore, I just like it when things look nice and there aren’t crumbs everywhere. Like an adult.”

“Uh since when?”

“Therapy, man. I live in New York City, if I were still so afraid of germs I’d have had like fifty strokes from the stress. I’m only a normal-person-amount scared of germs now. I’d been making some decent progress on the paranoia before Mike called and I got stabbed twice in 12 hours.”

Richie is impressed. He’d gone to therapy once but left before even getting out of the waiting room. “The shitty clown is gone so there’s no need for paranoia.”

“I don’t know about that. If this is the college dorm experience you never got to have I’m gonna wake up to you teabagging me at least once.”

Richie grins. “You know me so well. But I swear to you, no teabagging.”

“No wet willies or purple nurples either.”

“I swear on your extremely sexy dad’s grave.”

Eddie just sighs and continues on into his new room. He turns around. “No wedgies.”

 _If I’m putting my hands down your pants it’s not to pull your underwear up, it’s to pull it down_ , Richie thinks. He says, “I’m not actually 12 years old anymore.”

“Yes you are,” Eddie replies, turning away again.

 _Can’t argue with that_.

“What about swirlies?” Richie calls after him.

Eddie just gives him the finger.

Richie could not love him any more. He lets the feeling nestle in his chest for a hot second, then sits down and rubs his hands over his face. The Losers had always been mildly obsessed with each other, but now they were actually verbalizing it. The group chat is so full of heart emojis and “ilu”s now, it's ridiculous. So how is he going to balance his new freedom to be openly affectionate with not scaring Eddie off by being aggressively gay at him? Richie’s not an expert by any means but he’s pretty sure that heterosexual dudes always respond poorly to romantic advances by gay dudes.

The tempting thought here is that Eddie isn’t strictly heterosexual. Richie spends half his waking life now pondering whether or not Eddie could also be queer. He missed a pretty prime opportunity to enlighten Richie back in the car, though.

Eddie’s straight and Richie’s got a 30-year-old tragic gay crush on him. So what else is new?

But then, Eddie hadn’t said he didn’t want dudes pursuing him while he was healing. He said “no one.” Gender neutral. Non-specific. Could be bi.

 _Beep beep, Richie,_ he says to his brain. _Shut up. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment._

It gets harder and harder not to do that, though, as they settle into the new routine of living together. Richie knew he’d been lonely, but _fuck,_ he’d been _so lonely_ before Eddie arrived and filled the entire apartment with personality. It had been bland before, a sad place with bare white walls. Now there’s an average-sized fussy and argumentative actuary living between those walls, and sometimes they can’t contain everything both of them feel. Or at least it seems that way to Richie. His bathroom sink can’t hold all of the toiletries Eddie uses to keep his skin soft and wounds uninfected, his cabinets can’t fit all the food Eddie buys because he actually goes grocery shopping instead of ordering in everything, and his chest can’t contain all the weird swooping shit his heart does when Eddie walks into the kitchen barefoot with bedhead. Sometimes he swears to god he’s living in a commercial for yogurt, he’s so happy.

Except for the screaming nightmares. Eddie doesn’t get them as often as Richie, which doesn’t make much sense to him, since Eddie came extremely close to dying and could probably still remember the moment of impact and its immediate aftermath. Richie sure as fuck does. He sees it constantly. That, and the Losers’ deaths from the deadlights. Richie wakes up with tears in his eyes more than he wants to admit, and more than he hopes Eddie notices. It gets to be that Eddie shakes Richie awake and they work through a pot of coffee and sit together until it’s OK to go back to sleep.

Once, without prompting, he says, “So when I was in the deadlights I kept seeing all of us die in different, like, really fucking horrible ways. They’re different from the ones Bev saw, she said. And it wasn’t just the deaths. It was like possible futures. I only died in some of them. The rest it was you and the other Losers.”

Richie pauses. Eddie puts his hand on Richie’s back and rubs it in small circles. It makes Richie want to melt and cry at the same time. “Like, some of them went so far that we killed the clown and I thought we were safe but then something awful would happen and I was right back in that cave, trapped in the deadlights. Like _Groundhog Day_ , just over and over. And in some of them, there was just no memory of—of any of us. No sign we’d ever been there.”

“Just gone?”

“Gone. Even things that should’ve still been there.”

“Like what?”

“It was like I literally lived through all of it and had to go to the funeral and then came back and there was no gravestone.”

“Jesus. That’s fucked up, man.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know this isn’t just one of those fake futures?”

“Oh, Bill took care of that while you were in surgery.” He tells him all about the comet, and they spend the rest of the pot of coffee sharing increasingly sentimental memories of their time as kids, now that they can remember them. They go back to their beds when it starts getting light out. The next day they don’t bring it up, but the post-nightmare coffee becomes a ritual.

And it’s nice, to have someone to help him get through bad nights. He’s never had that before. Roommates, sure, but not ones he trusted enough to like, let them see him cry. It’s nice. It’s the best living situation he’s ever had.

Well. Except for the unbearable sense of longing he feels whenever he and Eddie so much as brush their legs together while sitting on the couch. Or when they touch in any way whatsoever. Or when Richie looks at him and the light hits him a certain way. Or when he raises his head and Eddie is looking at him. Eye contact, man, it fucks him up in ways he never thought possible. But even that is an exquisite kind of pain. It wouldn’t be painful if there weren’t hope buried under all of the fear.

People have mostly forgotten about his complete meltdown on stage in the aftermath of Mike’s call. It’s in the middle of the 2016 election, after all. Lots of other shit is going down. He’s rescheduled the tour dates so he’s not sued for breach of contract or something else. (His manager is taking care of it. Richie doesn’t do legal stuff. Or tax stuff. God, he hopes they’re not screwing him over.)

“I’m going to try out new jokes at these shows,” he tells Eddie.

“Oof, bad idea.”

“Wait, what? You said I should—“

“You can’t go onstage at one of these things and throw out a joke for the first time and just hope they’ll laugh. Your shows are fucking huge, sold out venues, people tweeting and scalping tickets. You can’t just go in without a net, that’s gonna backfire. If you bomb again it’ll be even worse than before.”

“Well, I practice the jokes. In the shower. Or while I’m driving. So.”

“Yeah? How did the French fries on the floor of your car respond?”

Richie crosses his arms over his chest. “They thought I was fucking hilarious.”

“Try the jokes out on me. I’ll let you know if they’re funny or not. Wait, we need Mike here, if you can make Mike laugh you know it’s actually good.”

 _Not a bad idea. Terrifying, but not a bad idea._ “Mike’s in Nepal, dude.”

“They have wifi in Nepal. Losers group Facetime chat, let’s do it.”

Richie’s warming up to the idea. “No, let’s get Bill in the room, and Ben and Bev and Mike on the phone. It’s better if there’s an in-person audience.”

“Hell yeah. If it goes well, a dinner party. If it doesn’t, still a dinner party, but we’re serving roast. Of you. We’ll roast you.”

“I got it, Eds.”

Eddie’s already got his phone out and is texting the group chat. “Thank god, something to do other than convalesce. I was going insane. Having more time to read is not as fun as I thought it’d be.”

“Aw, you don’t like being my housewife?”

“Hell no, man. The feminine mystique is real. Being in the house all day while the man is out working sucks.”

“But there’s so much more good TV than there was in the ‘50s. Do you want to have a kid, honey? That’ll fix things between us.” Eddie makes a skeptical face. More of a grimace, really. “Yeah, I know, it didn’t work for my parents either.”

This time he winced. “Woof. Save it for therapy, man.”

Richie's going to therapy now. Pretty much all of the Losers are, actually. Nearly dying in a bunch of storm drains while bullying a clown to death makes you want to work out your trauma. It’s helping. Richie leaves out most important things, but it’s helping. He’s mostly talked about the gay stuff. The other Losers know now, and they were characteristically supportive. God, he’s so glad they’re back.

“My sick leave and vacation is up soon, I was thinking of transferring to the LA branch of the company and working from home until I can get around better,” Eddie says.

“That sounds like a great idea, Eds.”

“It’ll be better than just watching TV and going to doctor’s appointments.”

“I mean, if you say so.”

They finally figure out a schedule for this trial run for Richie’s new material. Richie is surprisingly nervous about it in the days before it, but the second Bill walks in, the room brightens. He looks good. He’s writing a new book, and seems happy now that he isn’t being haunted by his dead brother and a killer klown from outer space.

Richie and Eddie spend dinner cataloguing all of each other’s flaws as roommates as Bill laughs his ass off.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Eddie,” Bill says. “You chose this. You could’ve lived with us.”

“Wait what?” Richie says.

Eddie has suddenly gone red.

“I offered to put him up while he was recovering and he said no,” Bill says.

“Really?” Richie says.

“Yeah. Ben offered too.”

“Reeaaallllllyyyy,” Richie says, and catches Eddie’s eye to let him know that he’s going to be as smug about this as possible for the rest of eternity.

“Goddammit, Bill,” Eddie says. “Get that look off your face, Richie, I just didn’t want to be third-wheeling the entire time. Especially with Ben and Bev, they’re so gross. Like, all in love and shit.”

“Yeah, people in love. Gross,” Bill says, looking at Richie, and Richie is going to stab him in the eye with a fork.

Eddie was right. Richie can admit it. It was better to say the new jokes in front of an audience, no matter how small. Mike laughed, though, and that’s what matters. Bev and Ben booed the second he said his name but after that they behaved. Eddie does a wide-mouthed scream-laugh when something really surprises him, and every time Richie dragged it out of him, he felt like his heart was doing parkour.

“You were right, man,” Richie says, recycling wine bottles and washing wine glasses after the call ended, the Losers exchanged their customary goodbye “I love you”s, and Bill went home. “These gigs will go better.”

“I know I was right. I only wish I could go to one of them.” He places a glass on the drying rack and starts scrubbing a plate.

“I know a guy, I can get you tickets.”

“No, dumbass, I’ve got to pick up my shit from New York. Myra’s selling the apartment.”

“Oh. I was going to go with you to do that.”

“It’s fine. I can handle it.”

“Right, but. I wanted to.”

“Dude, it’s fine. I’ll be OK. I was married to her for 12 years, I can face her alone.”

“It’s not that,” (it was that), “you can’t lift shit, you’re still healing.”

“I’m almost completely healed.” Now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t helped Eddie change his bandages for a long time. “Besides, movers exist, bro.”

“Right.”

The mood shifts infinitesimally as Eddie shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Plus, uh, I don’t think Myra would want to see you.”

“Not a comedy fan?”

“Uh, no, she, um, thinks you stole me from her.”

If Richie were in a cartoon his glasses would shatter and the lenses would fall out in a thousand pieces along with his teeth because that sentence just hit him straight in the face with the force of a wrecking ball.

“She thinks _what_?”

“Well, I mean, I see where she’s coming from. I disappear for a month and ask for a divorce and then move in with some guy.”

“But I didn’t—“

“Dude, I know.”

“How fucking high school is that? ‘My boyfriend’s not allowed to have other friends.’”

“Dude. I know. But she thinks it’s like a childhood sweethearts reconnecting thing.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I’m dead serious.”

Richie watches Eddie wipe the dishes dry in silence for a good thirty seconds, trying to process this information and how much he wishes it were actually true. What kind of sick joke is this?

“I’m sorry, I can’t get over this,” Richie says. “She thinks—“

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell her I was gay? Is that why she--”

“Yeah. My bad, that wasn’t my secret to tell. I don’t think she told anyone, though.”

“That’s not what I was worr—Did you tell her you were straight so don’t worry?”

Eddie ducks his head. “Uh. No.” He is very adamantly not looking at Richie.

If Richie were in a cartoon an anvil would’ve just fallen on his head because uh what the fuck?

“Are you?”

Eddie takes way too long to answer, in Richie’s opinion. “I don’t know, man. I’m still figuring shit out.”

Richie needs to lie down. What is he supposed to do with his hands? How does he make this situation less awkward?

“Hey, it’s cool. I get it. Shit’s complicated. God knows I’ve been through it. If you ever want to talk it out, I’m always here.”

“I know.”

“I’m obviously supportive and love you no matter what. We all do.”

“I know.” Is that a flush on the back of Eddie’s neck? Richie knows his own face is hot as hell. Even getting the words out is a challenge. He needs to go sprint like five miles to get rid of the nervous energy he now has. He needs to call Bev immediately. Or Bill. Or Ben. Bill said Ben would know what to do. Although Mike spoke to the others less, because he was still travelling. Maybe he’d be the safest option for a freakout. God, if only Stan were here. Stan could keep secrets on lockdown.

“Thank you,” Eddie adds. He finally meets Richie’s eyes. His lips are pursed and he seems to be waiting for something. A very heavy silence settles between them, weighing on Richie’s chest.

“I think we’re out of coffee beans,” Richie says a little too loudly. “I’m gonna run to the bodega. Do you want anything?”

Eddie blinks. “Uh, no, I’m good.”

“OK cool, I’ll be right back.”

He leaves without taking his jacket or wallet, but he’s got a death grip on his phone. He walks three blocks before ducking into an empty doorway, positive that Eddie won’t hear him from this far away.

Mike answers immediately. “Miss me already?”

“Dude, can you talk?”

“Yeah, I’m in my hotel room, I’m about to go to the market.”

“OK what the fuck do I do? Talk me down.”

“First of all you take a deep breath. What’s the problem, Rich? Is everything OK?”

“Everything is not OK, I’m bugging out.”

“Why? Is Eddie OK?”

“DUDE, Eddie might be queer and I don’t know how to handle it, man, I’m like, having a panic attack.”

“Ah,” Mike says.

“What the fuck does that mean? How are you so calm? Why aren’t you--?”

“To be honest, Rich, we kinda figured—“

“You _what?_ ”

“We figured this might happen, eventually. We’re all reassessing our lives and we considered the possibility that—“

“What the fuck, Mike?” Richie whispers to avoid screaming. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did he say anything to you?”

“No, no, he didn’t say anything.”

“Who’s we?”

“Uh. Me and Ben.”

“Oh, god. You told him?”

“Richie. Honey. Babe. Sweetie. It was extremely obvious. You should’ve seen yourself at the hospital.”

Richie blows out a breath between his teeth. He doesn’t like to think about that time. The longest hours of his life. “Excuse me, I was responding to my best friend being skewered in a platonic and completely reasonable and heterosexual way.”

Mike laughs.

“So everyone knows?”

“Uh, I think we all picked up on it.”

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

“We don’t talk about it behind your back or anything, we wouldn’t do that to you.”

“His wife thinks I stole him from her,” Richie says.

“Shit, really?” Mike says. “I mean, she’s got a point.”

“Nnnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhh.” Richie rips off his glasses and presses his fingers into his eyes. This is not how he expected this night to go.

“But yeah, it’s like how we all knew Ben had a thing for Bev, back in the day. And in Derry.”

“ _Shit_ , it’s _that_ obvious? Oh god, I’m gonna puke.”

“Rich. Take another breath.”

Richie does. He exhales a quiet scream.

“Do you think he knows that I’m like, ass over teakettle in love with him?”

Mike is silent.

“What the _fuck_? Dude, I need an answer here.”

“I haven’t spoken to him about it, I have no idea what he knows or feels about you. I mean, we all love you so he definitely does too. And you two’ve always had a…deeper connection.”

_What? They’re not supposed to have noticed. That should be private._

“Should I tell him? Like, do I shoot my shot here?”

“Not so fast, man. Slow your roll. What did you say to him?” Mike asks.

“I love and support him and he can talk to me if he wants and it’s fine, sexuality’s weird.”

“That’s exactly what you should have said. See, you’re good at this.” Richie scoffs. “You honestly never considered the possibility that he might be--?”

“I thought it was wishful thinking! I psyched myself out!”

“It still might be. I’m not gonna speculate, we still don’t really know all that much about each other, so I can’t say if he’s different around you than around--This is a conversation you’ve got to have with him. When he’s ready for it.”

“I’m gonna do something stupid. You got my hopes up. I’m going to do something extremely stupid and he’ll hate me forever.”

“That’s impossible. He’d never hate you. But yes, you will probably do something stupid. That’s kind of your thing.”

Well now he’s just offended. “That is not my _thing._ Goddammit, Mike.”

Mike’s smiling, the smug bastard, he can hear it in his voice. “But don’t do anything stupid tonight. Give him some space. Save it for after he’s done with Myra.”

“OK but what if--?”

“God, Richie, just treat him like you would any other friend who’s coming out to you.”

“I don’t have any other friends.”

“You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be.”

“Thank you for your feedback,” Richie snaps.

Mike laughs. He’s got a nice, deep laugh. Normally it fills up Richie like hot chocolate with marshmallows. Now he wants to smother it with a pillow. “Anytime, Rich. Try to get some sleep.”

“I will. I love you so much. I have to go buy coffee beans now.”

“I love you too, Richie.”

Richie hangs up and considers throwing his phone into the side of the building. Then he decides he’s being dramatic and considers climbing to the roof and throwing himself off the building. Then he goes to the bodega to get some coffee beans. Luckily he has enough cash in his pocket leftover from a taco truck lunch because he definitely forgot his wallet upstairs.

He forgot his keys, too. He has to be buzzed in like he’s a delivery guy.

“Beans,” he says, dropping them on the counter, where Eddie has placed the other full can they already had in the house.

“You good?” Eddie replies, looking at Richie with his huge beautiful dumb brown eyes over the rim of a cup of coffee. He takes a long sip.

Richie exhales and leans against the cabinets, his chin in his hand, his elbow on the counter. “Eddie, I am wonderful. How are you?”

“I’m peachy keen, Rich. You seem tense.”

Richie shuffles his feet. “Well, you know, trying out new material. I had to go take a walk, rework it a bit.”

“Mmmhmmm,” Eddie says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

 _Fuck no, I’m not ready, but yeah, kinda,_ Richie thinks. “Do _you_ want to talk about it?”

Eddie considers him for a long moment, his eyes darting all over Richie’s face, settling on his lips. Richie swears to god his heart stops, and he automatically fidgets, but Eddie looks back up and meets his eyes. “Nah. We’ll let it percolate a bit more.” He’s smiling in a way Richie doesn’t understand.

“Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not,” Eddie says, laughing.

“I’m trying to be a good friend, here. I don’t know how to be supportive. Like, what flag do I buy you?”

“I don’t need a flag. Pride’s not for like, seven, eight months. I’ll figure it out by then.”

“Or you don’t need to! It’s fine! You take as long as you need! There’s not a deadline!”

Eddie smiles, mostly to himself. “D’you want some coffee?” he asks. “I made a pot while you were out.”

“I would love some.”

So he pours a mug and they sit at the kitchen table and talk about Richie’s new jokes and logistics for their travels next week. It soothes Richie. This is normal. This can be normal.

*

The tour dates go as planned. The new material goes over surprisingly well. He makes up some bullshit excuse about why he freaked out so badly before and what he’s been doing since then. Tries to make it funny and mostly succeeds. It feels good.

He misses Eddie more than is reasonable. Pretty much every second he’s not on stage. Especially when he’s in his hotel rooms, and it’s three hours behind Eddie’s time zone, so he’s asleep when Richie’s awake. Or Richie’s asleep while Eddie’s already been up for hours doing whatever shit he’s been doing in NYC. He likes waking up to texts from Eddie. He’d prefer to wake up with Eddie. But that kind of thinking is super not helpful so he tries to avoid wallowing in it.

Eddie, it turns out, has way more shit than he remembers having.

“Is all that going to fit in our apartment?” he asks Eddie.

“I don’t know, man. Do we have any storage?”

“No idea. I’ll ask the landlord. The lease is up soon, we could always find a bigger place.” He doesn’t realize what he’s said until he hears the silence on Eddie’s end of the call.

_BEEP BEEP RICHIE, WHAT THE FUCK._

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah I guess. I mean, I thought I’d be finding my own place soon, once the divorce was over.”

“Oh shit, I forgot. You totally can! I just thought—“

“No it’s cool, we’ll—“

“I don’t mean to—“

“Right—no—“

Richie is going to go slam his fingers in the door. That’s the only way to escape this conversation. Eddie crashing at his best friend’s place while he goes through a divorce is so much different from Eddie and Richie deciding to move into a new apartment together and sign a lease together and combine their furniture and dishes and whatever. That’s not just guys being dudes. That’s like, couple shit. He has very specifically not been bringing up couple shit in regards to him and Eddie. Anything about the future qualifies as couple shit.

“You can stay if you want, you can go if you want, it’s completely up to you,” Richie says. “We’re just roomies, it’s like not a thing you have to worry about, I can always—“

“Rich, I can’t move out until I get a job or the settlement comes through, man. I don’t have enough for a security deposit yet, and I’ll need to get a car.”

Relief floods through Richie like the deadlights had flooded his vision all those months ago.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I’ve got a few interviews scheduled, next week, though.”

“Oh.” Yeah, never mind about that relief. “Hey, congrats. Still doing risk analysis?” That was a normal sounding voice, right? He successfully played that off cool, right?

“No, I’m gonna be an astrophysicist. The interviews are at NASA.”

Despite himself, Richie chuckles. “Sarcasm is unattractive, Edward.”

“You’d know about unattractive, wouldn’t you, after looking in a mirror for 40 years?”

“Oh, Eddie’s got jokes. Maybe you should be the one in this shitty hotel room waiting to go onstage.”

“Man, I wish I were there in your shitty hotel room with you, instead of this shitty hotel room here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man, it sucks here. I know I give you shit for being a slob but at least we don’t have roaches.”

“She made you get a hotel room? You can’t sleep on the couch or something, you have to get a roach-infested hotel room?”

“I chose to get a roach-infested hotel room. I thought it’d be better if we didn’t sleep under the same roof.”

“Yeah, you don’t want her to go all Kathy Bates on you. Break your ankles with a sledgehammer.”

“She wouldn’t do that. She can’t actually lift a sledgehammer, no upper body strength at all.” Richie barks a laugh. “That was mean. We’re not gonna do fat ex-wife jokes, it’s hacky.”

“Well that rules out the next five things I was going to say.”

“Yeah, you’re not a hack anymore, gotta avoid the low-hanging fruit.”

“Know what else hangs low?”

“If you say my wife’s tits, I swear to god…”

“My balls!”

“Goddammit, Richie.”

“Because they’re so huge.”

“I hate you.”

Richie feels warm inside because he can hear in Eddie’s voice how untrue that statement is. That was a motherfucking guffaw if he’s ever heard one.

“Hey, I could’ve done a fat mom joke too, but I went classier.”

“Yes, your balls are very classy.”

“They are hella classy. They wear a monocle and top hat.”

“Like the Monopoly guy?”

“Fuck yeah like the Monopoly guy.”

“Well, now that that visual is burned into my brain, I’m gonna go to bed, it’s late here.”

“Good night, Eduardo. Dream about my classy Monopoly guy balls.”

“I will not.”

“You’re missing out. Goodnight, man, love you,” Richie says, unthinkingly.

“I love you too,” Eddie replies, just as easily.

And Richie knows it’s just what the Losers make a point of saying to each other when they say goodbye, he knows that, but it still makes his blood sing. He sits in bed for several minutes, just staring at his phone.

“Fuck.”

A text from Bev comes through: How you doing, pumpkin?

Richie: Slaying

Bev: Shows are going well? New jokes not embarrassing you?

Richie: They love me

Bev: God knows why

Richie: [middle finger emoji]

Bev: lol I miss you

Bev: And Eddie

Richie: We miss you too

Richie: Well, I do. I’m assuming he does. He’s in NYC right now.

Bev: I know, he was texting me

Richie: About what?

Bev: Pictures of the Statue of Liberty. What do you think?

Richie: She’s hot

Bev: Divorce, idiot. He’s asking for advice

Richie: Tell him to do it

Bev: Richard.

Richie: Beverly.

Bev: Things are going to change and you need to be ready for it. He’s going to be going through a lot of emotions and I need to know you’re not going to freak out and make it weird for him

Richie: Moi? Freak out? Weird?

Bev: He told me what happened when he said he might be bi

Richie: OK listen

Richie: I thought I was the only gay one,

Richie: There can only be one

Richie: I got there first

Richie: Now I’m gonna have to fight him to the death for the title

Richie: And I was trying to figure out how to best him in hand-to-hand combat

Bev: Just be patient with him, ok?

Richie: I’m always patient

Bev: I just snorted so loud that Ben heard me in the other room and asked if I was ok

Bev: For real tho, as roommate and best friend you have to be supportive and helpful and there for him or I will fucking kill you

Richie: Nope, I’m gonna throw him out on the street

Richie: jk I don’t ever want him to leave but I’m trying to be cool about it

Bev: Try to keep the dumb jokes to a minimum when he’s talking about it unless he wants you to distract him

Bev: And don’t insult his wife, he just needs to let it all go, don’t bring her up

Bev: Keep him company but don’t crowd him

Bev: And keep the house clean, he says you’re a slob

Rich: Tough but fair

Bev: Ben says hi and he loves you

Richie: Tell him I’m flattered but not interested

Bev: You should be so lucky

Richie: Slap his ass for me

Bev: [eye roll emoji]

Bev: Love you

Richie: Love you too

So he’d told Bev he might be bi. Interesting. And that Richie was his best friend. Not as interesting. And he told Bev how Richie responded when he told him he might be bi. Double interesting.

If Eddie were bi and uninterested in Richie, Richie would never recover. The idea of Eddie dating a man other than him makes him want to shrivel up and die. The idea of Eddie on his knees sucking some other dude’s dick makes him want to smash every breakable thing in this room, including the ridiculously expensive tiny bottles of booze from the mini bar.

He’s gotta tell him. Before Eddie moves out. Like, that’s just easier for everyone, if Eddie decides to stay with Richie, which he would, if he also was in love with Richie. Best case scenario. And if he’s not also in love with Richie and doesn’t want to stay, then, well, Eddie moving out will be for the best. Worst case scenario.

The thought makes him want to drink every ridiculously expensive tiny bottle of booze from the mini bar.

How should he do it? Should he initiate the Big Gay Conversation and then casually bring up that Eddie was his sexual awakening? Should he talk about the stupid fucking hammock in the clubhouse and how he’d try to goad Eddie into climbing up into it with him just so they could be close? Or about how in that 27 year period when he didn’t remember Eddie, he was still attracted to short guys with brown hair and brown eyes who talked too quickly? And how when he saw Eddie again with Bill and Mike in that restaurant he couldn’t fucking breathe because everything that he’d sensed had been missing had suddenly fallen back into place? That the screaming nightmares are the ones in which he watches Eddie die?

What he’d said to Mike was true. Sometimes he did get the sense that Eddie was interested, but he’d always immediately chalked it up to wishful thinking and dismissed it. They touch more now than they did when they were kids, but Richie explained that by reasoning that Eddie wasn’t deathly afraid of germs anymore, the Losers were all much more openly affectionate now after everything they’d been through, and also he himself was a thirsty slut who couldn’t keep his hands off Eddie. But maybe it wasn’t just that Eddie had gotten used to Richie touching him while he was in the hospital, helping him in and out of bed, walking with him as part of physical therapy, and whatever. What if Eddie could still feel Richie prickling on his skin hours after every bit of contact? What if Eddie heard the shower running and had to forcibly stop himself from picturing Richie under the spray? What if there were other things about Richie, things he couldn’t even imagine, that Eddie found sexy?

Now there’s a painful thought. Obviously Eddie loves him as a person, but that doesn’t mean there is anything about Richie worthy of love, let alone desire. Somehow he’d fooled the Losers into liking him, and they hadn’t stopped even after finding out his secret. But that’s a different kind of liking than what he was after. Not better or worse, just different.

It occurs to him that he had that exact same pattern of thoughts 30 years ago. Several times, mostly at night. _Fuck._

He hugs the stupid fucking teddy bear from the hospital to his chest, gives it a kiss on the forehead, and stands up to get ready for his show. He did not name it his Eddie-Bear, because that would be dumb. That’s what Eddie’s mom had called him, and even though it rhymes and it reminds him of Eddie, that’s dumb.

He totally thinks of it as Eddie-Bear, though.

He hates that fucking bear but needs it. They’ve been through a lot together. He tucks it into bed. It’ll be late when he gets home, it needs its sleep.

*

Richie: Hey how do I tell a childhood friend that I’m in love with him but like not in a creepy way?

Ben: Is this about Mike?

Richie: …

Ben: I’m just fucking with you

Ben: I really want to be helpful here but hell if I know

Ben: Did you write him poetry and give him a Snow White kiss and then wait to bring it up 27 years later while almost drowning in quicksand? Because that worked for me

Richie: Oh shit I forgot, that’s exactly what I did. Cool, thanks man

Ben: np

Ben: Seriously though, just tell him. It doesn’t have to be cute or impressive or romantic, it just has to be from the heart

Richie: So like flowers and candles and shit?

Ben: Please do not set anything on fire.

Richie: I’mma do it

Ben: Do not do that

Richie: Can you just ask him for me?

Ben: I’m texting him rn. Eddie, do you like Richie? send your reply in emoji form.

Ben: When the moment seems right ask if you can kiss him

Richie: Asking is not romantic

Ben: Take your chances just laying one on him then. Eddie loves surprises

Ben: Although this can’t really be a surprise, you’re not exactly subtle

Richie: That is RICH coming from you, Mr. January Embers

Richie: Or whatever

Ben: It worked so fuck off

Richie: When’s the moment right? How do I tell?

Ben: Well don’t wait until you’re both about to die

Ben: Other than that, that’s something you’ve got to feel out for yourself

Ben: There are moments when you think he might feel something too, right? Where you look at him and can’t breathe all of a sudden? Do it then

Richie: That’s like every time I look at him, man, you need to be more specific

Ben: That’s adorable, I’m screenshotting it

Richie: I will murder you, Benjamin

Ben: Just try it, Tozier

Richie: Between the two of us, who has actually killed a guy?

Ben: Touche.

Richie: Thanks, I still have nightmares about it

Ben: I’m calling the cops

Richie: FUCK DA POLICE

Ben: [gif of John Mulaney shouting Fuck Da Police]

Ben: Do you know this guy? He’s hilarious

Richie: I’m leaving now

Richie: Don’t come after me

Ben: [gif of Billy Eichner yelling Someone follow me, I’m distraught]

Ben: He’s funny too

Richie: Funnier than me?

Ben: [gif of Elle Woods saying What, like it’s hard?]

Richie: SAVAGE

Richie: Wig snatched

Richie: I’m proud of you

Richie: OK, I have to go, I’m in a meeting

Richie: Thanks for the help

Richie: Love you

Ben: Love you too

*

It turns out their building doesn’t have storage, but Richie’s manager finds a place cheap enough that Eddie can store his shit until he moves out. A thing that Richie has decided is not going to happen, by the way.

Eddie’s back before Richie, and the apartment looks exceptionally clean when he walks in and throws his bag down and flings himself facedown onto the couch. Like, Eddie vacuumed the couch. He’s hung some atrocity of a painting on the wall. Richie can only assume Eddie got it in the divorce. Eddie also changed the sheets on his bed and brought in a pretty nice desk and chair. There’s a rug under his bed now. Shit like that.

It looks homey. Like Eddie truly lives there. Richie loves it.

“That painting is hideous,” is the first thing he says when Eddie walks through the door.

“Welcome back to you too, fuckface,” Eddie replies.

“Where were you all gussied up?” He’s wearing a suit. Richie might want to grab his tie and haul Eddie into the bedroom with it.

“Interview.”

“How’d it go?”

“Meh.”

“Do you think you got it?”

“Could’ve, no idea.”

“God, I’m glad I don’t have to do job interviews anymore.”

“Rub it in.”

“What do you want for dinner?”

Eddie waves a hand vaguely. “Whatever, you pick, I don’t care.”

“Thai.”

“You know I hate Thai food, fuck you.”

Richie grins like the piece of shit he is. “I’m just gonna get a giant bowl of mashed potatoes.”

“Have you ever eaten a vegetable in your life?”

“No.”

“It shows,” Eddie says, poking Richie in the gut as he passes into the living room to sit on the couch with a beer.

“Hey! This is solid muscle.”

Eddie laughs derisively.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Richie says, but then he actually looks at Eddie. Oh. His waistline is pretty trim. His chest is broad. His biceps are solid. Overall he’s more filled out and muscular than he’d been in the hospital. He looks really good. Healthy. Pretty fucking hot.

“Wait, dude, why do you look so good? Are you one of those people who exercise?”

“There’s a bike in my room, man, someone might as well use it. It gets boring around here.”

“Oh so that’s why you’re all prison jacked now? Doing push-ups in your cell?”

“Yup.” He sips his beer and turns on the TV.

“Fuck. I’ve got to start doing that.”

“We both know you won’t.”

“Shut up.”

“Order something in, I’m starving. Pasta.”

“I’ll get a salad.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Want to watch _30 Rock_?”

“You know I can’t say no to Liz Lemon. I’m gonna shower first, I smell like airplane.”

“Food!”

“You’ve got a phone.”

“I don’t have Seamless.”

“Dude you’ve been here like five months, how do you not—“

“They steal your data and sell it, Rich, some of us care about privacy. Do you know how many data breaches--”

“Oh my god. Here, use mine.” He tosses Eddie his phone.

“For real though, what do you want, because I know you won’t really eat a salad.”

“Burger with the works, sweet potato fries, extra pickles, no slaw.”

“Got it. Go shower, you smell.”

Richie does. Normally he plays music but he doesn’t have his phone to do that, so it goes quicker than normal. He’s dressed in his PJs when he comes back out and sits on the couch. The TV is no longer on. Something about that makes Richie vaguely nervous.

“Food’s on its way,” Eddie says.

“Thanks.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What’s this?” He holds up Richie’s phone. Richie squints and then realizes what he’s seeing.

_Oh fuck._

“Oh fuck.”

He jumps up and makes a break for the door before remembering that he is not in fact a crazy person and can’t just run out to avoid a conversation.

It’s a picture of the Kissing Bridge. Specifically of the letters R+E newly re-carved into the Kissing Bridge. White-hot panic courses through Richie’s veins all over again. _Stall, Richie._

“Why were you going through my phone, Mr. Right to Privacy?” he says, snatching at it. Eddie pulls his hand away. Richie tries to grab it again but Eddie holds the phone to his chest and smacks Richie’s arm away with the other.

“I was gonna change your background to a shitty picture of me giving you the finger and couldn’t find it once I took it so I went into the gallery to see if I accidentally deleted it. R+E, is that Richie and Eddie?”

Richie just makes a series of inarticulate noises in response.

“Did you carve this?”

“Um.”

Richie cannot for the life of him read what’s going on with Eddie’s face right now. It makes this a thousand times worse. He’s going to throw himself out the window. He stands behind the couch so it’s between him and Eddie and crosses his arms over his chest.

“OK, don’t hate me, but—“

“Is that a yes?”

 _The jig is up, ol’ boy._ “Yes. It’s the Kissing Bridge in Derry. Those are our initials.” The floor is very interesting right now. Richie looks at his toes curling down into the rug rather than at Eddie.

“When did you even do this?”

“Uh. The first time was when your arm was broken when we were kids. And then again when you were in the hospital.” Jesus, his voice sounds like he’s going to cry. Fuck, maybe he is.

“Why?”

“Oh my god, Eddie, don’t make me say it, come on, man.”

“Dude I need to know what you’re thinking because if you’re fucking with me I swear to god—“

“How could I possibly be fucking with you right now? That picture’s from like, six months ago.”

“Just answer the question, Richie, for fuck’s sake.”

This time he studies his own hands. When did his knuckles get so bony and his fingers so hairy? “Because I had a big gay crush on you as a kid and then when I saw you again I realized it never went away and now I’m actually in big gay love with you, and when you almost died it fucked me up. So I went to see if the carving was still there and it was and it was like the bridge remembered you even when I didn’t so I redid it and took a picture so I wouldn’t forget you again.”

Eddie’s looking at the picture when Richie sneaks a glance up at him. He doesn’t look mad, which makes Richie’s shoulder muscles unclench a tiny bit.

Now he’s typing something on the phone, fingers swiping and tapping away, and Richie looks at the window again. He couldn’t fit through it anyway. He hears the vibration of Eddie’s phone on the coffeetable. Eddie throws Richie’s phone onto the couch as he steps forward.

“You’re in big gay love with me?” he asks, skirting around the side of the couch. Richie stumbles backwards and hits the wall, about to shit a brick. He tries to play it cool and shrugs.

“Yeah but like, it’s fine, you don’t have to—“

Eddie’s got a hand on his shoulder and the other on his waist and he’s raising his face up and holy _shit_ Eddie is kissing Richie. Like, on purpose. Somewhere in his brain a spark plug fizzes out and Richie can’t fucking move. His lips are still trying to form some bullshit nonsense words but Eddie inhales sharply and that’s when Richie gets his shit together enough to kiss back. He clamps his hands down on Eddie’s wrists and then moves one up to cradle Eddie’s cheek, his thumb gently caressing the scar there. He tilts his head, closes his eyes, and drops his jaw and that’s it, show’s over, folks, he’s never going to stop kissing Eddie because Eddie _moans._ Like what Richie is doing feels _good_ and he _doesn’t want it to stop._ A sense of manic, gleeful disbelief rises inside him, and he wants to laugh like an insane person to let it out, but he tamps it down in favor of licking into Eddie’s mouth, which was the right choice because Eddie moans _again._ His hands are running all over Richie’s sides on their way up to his shoulders, and Richie thinks he might have whimpered like a desperate little kid in response, but he can’t be sure because his brain is in a thousand different places, following the synapses his nerves are sending out and surging along with the blood through his veins. It’s the emotional equivalent of grabbing an electric fence.

His arms sneak down around Eddie’s waist and pull him closer so their bodies are flush up against one another. Eddie’s so warm that Richie wants to curl up against him like a cat in sunlight. Eddie keeps spanning the width of Richie’s shoulders with his hands, grabbing onto them like they’re all that’s keeping him upright. He insinuates one of his legs between Richie’s so that Richie is riding Eddie’s thigh, and the pressure on his groin makes him break away long enough to whisper the only thing he can think to say.

“Mmmmm fuck,” Richie groans, panting, and then goes back in for more. Eddie’s either smiling or trying to breathe because his lips aren’t meeting Richie’s like before, so Richie switches between peppering short kisses all over Eddie’s mouth and cussing reflexively in a mumbling stream of consciousness that is struggling to grapple with this new reality.

“You fucking asshole,” Eddie says between kisses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

Eddie hums in agreement and softly bites Richie’s lip and god fucking _damn_ , it drives Richie wild. He’s hard and getting harder and he grinds down against Eddie’s thigh enough to get some friction going through the thin material of his pajama pants. The feeling shoots through his balls and makes his toes curl.

“Shit,” Richie says. “ _Shit._ Oh my god.” He reaches for Eddie’s ass and gets two big handfuls of it, and now Eddie is the one pressing them closer and gasping.

“Jesus!” he breathes.

“No, it’s me, Richie,” Richie says, and Eddie huffs a laugh and shoves him back further against the wall to tell him to shut up.

“You need to shave,” Eddie says, rubbing his cheek against Richie’s, the stubble scratching pleasantly.

“I’m a little busy now, Eds,” Richie says, and squeezes his ass again. Eddie bucks his hips involuntarily into Richie’s. Their dicks rub together through their clothes and Richie honest to god is afraid his knees will buckle. He steps away from the wall.

“Up,” Richie says, pulling Eddie forward, and Eddie wraps his legs around Richie’s waist. Richie walks them over to the couch and drops Eddie onto it. Eddie falls so heavily that Richie’s phone is catapulted off the cushion onto the floor. They’ll worry about it later. He straddles Eddie’s lap and leans back down to kiss him again. How is this even better than he thought it’d be? That shouldn’t be possible.

Eddie’s hands are on his waist, pushing his shirt up, and then it’s up and off, with Richie’s glasses tangled up somewhere in it. Back to kissing. Richie’s hunched over trying to account for the height difference. “Dude, switch spots with me,” Eddie says. “You’re gonna pull a muscle.”

“OK but the pants are coming off,” Richie says, stepping back.

“Good,” Eddie says, and pushes himself off the couch to get at Richie’s waistband. Richie goes for Eddie’s belt buckle, and they struggle with each other’s clothing in a way that Richie finds incredibly funny and endearing, their hands getting in each other’s way while trying to take off the clothes but keep touching as much skin as possible. They shove Eddie’s pants and boxer briefs down but get distracted by Eddie’s shirt. Eddie takes care of his own tie and Richie undoes his shirt buttons with remarkable patience considering how hard his dick is. Eddie’s wearing an undershirt like an asshole, but he seems content to keep it on in favor of pushing Richie onto the couch and dropping to his knees. He licks his goddamn lips and Richie has like three seconds to prepare himself before his cock is in Edward Kaspbrak’s mouth. His eyes roll back into his head, he’s pretty sure, and he thinks he yells but can’t be certain. The sounds Eddie’s mouth is making are going to be ringing in his ears for the rest of the night.

Richie threads his fingers through Eddie’s hair and massages his scalp while Eddie bobs and licks and sucks inexpertly but enthusiastically.

“I have had wet dreams about you sucking my dick,” Richie says. “For 30 years, I swear to god, it’s been dudes with dark hair and big brown eyes blowing me and me waking up with cum all over my bed. I didn’t even know I had a type until I saw you again and was like, Shit, there he is, that’s him, that’s who started it.” Eddie doesn’t reply, he just sucks harder and swirls his tongue over the tip of Richie’s cock. “Shit, you’re a genius.”

Eddie moves down to mouth at Richie’s balls and Richie spreads his legs wider and tries not to pull Eddie’s hair.

“I love you so much, Eddie, I can’t even begin to— FUCK—“ Eddie sucks him down again, nearly to the root. He can feel the tip hit the back of Eddie’s throat. “SHIT, Eddie, you’re beautiful, I can’t believe how good you are at this, it’s insane.” He keeps babbling, his voice getting higher as he gets more and more worked up, until he can feel his balls tighten and his thighs start to shake. “I’m gonna cum, you gotta stop or—“

Eddie doesn’t stop, and Richie squirts cum straight into his mouth. Eddie pulls off and spits it out onto Richie’s stomach and pumps his hand up and down Richie’s length until he’s finished. His cheeks are flushed and his lips are covered in spit and cum and he’s the hottest thing Richie has ever seen in his life.

“Get the fuck up here,” Richie says, and pulls Eddie up by his hair, panting like he’s just climbed three flights of stairs. Eddie straddles Richie’s lap and Richie kisses him hard, hard enough to hurt, but Eddie’s tough, he’s always been tough, he takes it like it’s nothing.

Richie licks across his palm and up his fingers and takes Eddie in hand. Eddie does a full-body shudder and buries his face in Richie’s neck, biting into the skin just over his collarbone.

“Shit, that’s hot, Eddie, baby, holy fuck. That’s right, this is what I’ve always wanted, you’re here with me, I want to make you feel good, sweetheart. You made me feel so good, I’ve never felt better, I want to do the same for you,” he says, and he keeps talking and talking, whispering filthy encouragement into Eddie’s ear. He waits for Eddie to tell him to shut up, but he never does, so he keeps talking and stroking until he says, “You ready to cum for me?” and Eddie does, splattering it up against his and Richie’s chests.

It takes them several minutes to come down from the high. They kiss lazily, and Richie wipes them clean with his shirt.

“Are we dead?” Richie asks. He feels so relaxed he’s melting into the sofa.

“Pfft, no, you’re just in terrible shape,” Eddie says, but he’s a solid weight on Richie’s lap, not even trying to hold himself up. “Can’t even handle a bit of cardio.”

“I think I did all right,” Richie says.

“Meh,” Eddie says, and does one of those middling hand gestures. Richie laughs because Eddie’s still out of breath himself.

“Where the fuck are my glasses?” Richie asks.

“Floor somewhere,” Eddie says, his voice muffled into Richie’s chest. Richie’s running his hands up and down Eddie’s back beneath his shirt. His skin is surprisingly soft. Richie says as much. “Thanks, I grow it myself,” Eddie says. That starts them off giggling until Richie’s fingertips find the scar on Eddie’s back where Pennywise’s claw ripped through him. It’s a solid mass of tissue. Richie hasn’t seen it in months, not since it was tender, freshly grown skin replacing the scab. He circles it cautiously. Eddie looks at him warily.

“I bet it looks pretty fucking badass,” Richie says.

“You should see the other guy,” Eddie says.

“No thanks,” Richie says quietly. “I’m good.”

Eddie just kisses him softly.

The door buzzer loudly interrupts them. _Oh right. Food._

“Go clean up, I’ll get it,” Richie says. Eddie picks up his clothes and heads for the bathroom, stopping to hand Richie his glasses. Richie steps back into his pajama bottoms and buzzes the guy in. He gives him a big cash tip and thanks him, and by the time he’s got everything on the table and out of the bags, Eddie’s back. He’s wearing some athletic shorts and an old shirt of Richie’s. Richie really likes seeing Eddie in his clothes.

They eat off plates, something Richie never did before Eddie moved in. Eddie rests his feet in Richie’s lap, and Richie runs his fingers along Eddie’s ankle while they watch _30 Rock._ Richie says, “Hey, Eddie,” to get Eddie to look up, and when Eddie sees Richie’s phone pointing at him, he gives the camera the finger.

“Perfect.”

Richie sets it as his phone’s lockscreen. Eddie shows Richie his own phone. The Kissing Bridge picture is now his lockscreen. “I sent it to myself.”

Richie actually blushes like he’s 13 years old again. “You weren’t supposed to see that. Remember when I told you about the deadlights?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what was gone. I didn’t see any funerals. I went to the bridge and the carving wasn’t there. I re-carved it and the wood just erased it. In that one we left your body down there, so you were completely gone. It fucked me up, man.”

“Hey. Thanks for not leaving me down there,” Eddie says. He interlocks his fingers with Richie’s and kisses the back of his hand.

“You’re welcome. This worked out pretty well but I was gonna tell you in a much cooler way.”

“How?”

“I hadn’t figured it out yet.”

“When?”

“I didn’t have a set deadline. Before you moved out.”

“You suck at planning.”

Richie shrugs. “True.”

“I think you would’ve chickened out,” Eddie says.

Richie is really, truly offended. “Motherfucker, I called a demon clown from outer space a sloppy bitch to his ugly fucking face, I don’t chicken out of anything.”

“Big deal, I threw a fence spike through its chest.”

“I literally killed a man, compared to that talking about feelings is like--”

“Really fucking scary,” Eddie says, and Richie laughs in agreement.

“He used to taunt me about being gay,” Richie says. “That piece of shit clown.”

“Fuck, did he?”

“Yeah man, he was a real asshole about it.”

“Shit, dude, that sucks. I was just really repressed, that fucking clown didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Well I think we successfully put those neuroses to rest, if I say so myself.”

He holds up his hand, moving it closer and closer to Eddie’s face until Eddie gives him a high-five. Then Eddie steals some of Richie’s fries.

They sleep in the same bed that night. And the next and the next, ad nauseum. Richie sleeps sprawled all over his bed while Eddie sleeps with his limbs tightly pulled in, and both of their nightmares become less frequent.

Eddie doesn’t move out.

The Losers find out they’re together at the Welcome Home party that Ben and Bev throw for Mike at their place. Eddie and Richie arrive last, enveloping the Losers in hugs and cheek kisses. They give them a tour of Ben’s crazy fancy house. “Eddie, you’re in here, and Richie, you’re across the hall,” Ben says.

“That won’t be necessary,” Eddie says, as Richie puts their bags down inside the door and throws himself onto the bed.

“Eds, this is so soft, you gotta feel this.”

“So are you two--?” Bill asks.

“Gonna fuck on this bed? Absolutely,” Richie says.

“Beep beep, Richie. Oooh, it is really nice,” Eddie says, sitting down. Richie wraps himself around Eddie like a koala bear.

“Finally, thank God,” Mike says.

“Took you long enough,” Bev agrees.

“Shut up,” Richie says.

“Who won the bet?” Eddie says.

“There was no bet,” Ben says.

“Wait, really?” Richie says. “I was sure you guys were all talking about it behind our backs.”

“I told you we weren’t,” Mike says.

“We thought you were lying,” Eddie says.

“That hurts,” Bill says.

“Well we got together a month ago, for when you eventually settle the bet,” Richie says.

“There wasn’t a bet,” Bev says.

“Hey, look at this shit,” Eddie says, and pulls up the Kissing Bridge picture on his phone. Richie groans and hides his face in the pillow as everyone gathers around. “He did that in 1989. Isn’t that nuts?”

Ben looks at Richie, impressed. “It’s not a poem but it’s not bad,” he says.

“I saw that,” Mike says. “I wondered who did it.”

“Glad I could solve that mystery for you, Mikey. Anyway, can we eat?” Richie says. His face is really red.

“He’s still got that bear from the hospital,” Eddie says.

“Oh my god,” Richie says.

“It’s very adorable,” Eddie says. “He calls it his Eddie-Bear. I made it a little inhaler and a cast.” He shows them some pictures of that, too. The cast says LO ~~S~~ VER on it.

“Oh my god, we just broke up,” Richie says.

“Oh, I’ve got a good one,” Ben says, and pulls up the screenshot of his text with Richie. He reads it aloud. Everyone coos and laughs.

“Betrayed by my own brother. OK, wow,” Richie says. “Bev, Mike, you gonna jump in here?”

“Hey, Richie, tell us about the time you called me freaking out because Eddie might be queer,” Mike says.

“Oh, I heard about that,” Bev says. “Eddie said it was hilarious.”

“Speaking of hilarious, I’ve got a new Comedy Central special coming up,” Richie says. “I actually wrote this one.”

“Hey, we can’t all gang up on Richie,” Bill says. “Eddie was really obvious too. I’m not sure how Richie missed it for so long.”

“Me neither,” Eddie says.

“Uh name ONE obvious thing Eddie did that I missed,” Richie says.

“Divorced his wife,” Bill says.

“But not FOR me,” Richie says.

“Yes he did,” Ben says.

“Moved across the country to live with you,” Mike says.

“Took like 100 pictures of you doing random shit and sent them to the group text,” Bev says. Eddie’s nodding along as they say things, like, _Yep, I did that, yep, that’s true, yep, can you believe he didn’t get it?_ and Richie is offended.

“OK but wait,” Richie says, “none of that is strictly romantic, platonic friends do shit like that all the time.”

“He javelined a fencepost through a demon’s heart because it was hurting you,” Mike says.

“Using the power of belief,” Bev says.

“And love,” Mike says.

“Because you told him you thought he was brave,” Bill says.

“Big deal! I dug a hatchet into some dude’s head for Mike, that doesn’t mean I’m in love with Mike!” Richie exclaims. “No offense, Mike.”

Everyone ignores him.

“Oh, he’d only let Richie help him with physical therapy,” Bev says. “If any of us tried to take his arm to go for a walk or whatever he’d pout.”

“Or change his bandages,” Mike says. “Only Richie did that.”

“Whenever he’d tell a joke he’d always look at you first, Rich, to see if you’d laugh,” Ben says.

“The number of times I caught him staring at you,” Mike says.

“You didn’t see them after they’d been living together,” Bill says. “I swear to god, just eye sex, all the time. So much pining.”

Eddie’s face isn’t nearly as red as Richie’s. He might not even be embarrassed. Richie feels oddly exposed.

“I can’t believe it took us so long to figure out that when you guys were bickering you were actually flirting,” Bev says.

“To be fair, it took me a long time to figure that one out too,” Eddie says.

“Ha, once in Derry I was like, ‘Hey have you seen Richie?’ and Eddie was like, ‘Yeah can you _believe_ how tall he got? His shoulders are so broad,’ and I was like, ‘Uh no I meant like do you know where he is?’” Bill says. “Obviously checking you out.”

“He mentioned the jawline to me,” Ben says. “He said it was better than mine.”

“IT IS,” Richie says, triumphant.

“Oh, I’ve got a good one,” Mike says. They all turn to look at him. “He told the hospital that you were his fiancé so they’d let you have unrestricted visiting hours.”

That one gets Eddie’s face burning hot.

“Goddammit, Mike,” he says, burying his head in Richie’s shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to tell.”

“Holy shit, really?” Richie says. Everyone else looks surprised too.

“Damn, I didn’t know that,” Ben says, and Bill and Bev shake their heads.

“They asked if he was family and I couldn’t just say no,” Eddie says.

“I thought you just had like, really good insurance,” Richie says, wrapping his arms around Eddie. “Or that Ben was bribing them to bend the rules.”

“He made me stand guard while he called Myra,” Mike says, “in case they’d hear and know he was lying.”

“How did you even tell them?” Bev says. “They let him in first, you couldn’t even talk, you had a tube down your throat.”

“They said, ‘Eddie, your friends are here and they said they love you.’ So I did this,” Eddie says, and makes circles with his fingers and holds them up to his eyes like they’re glasses, then points to his (now bare) ring finger. “Apparently that was all it took because _someone_ was having a conniption in the waiting room.”

“Babe, you really did that?” Richie asks. He’s still stunned. “You were so doped up, how did you even think of that?”

“I wanted to see you,” Eddie says, shrugging. “I wanted you there.”

“I’m legit gonna cry,” Ben says, as Richie kisses Eddie.

“Save it for when we get engaged,” Richie says.

Everyone gasps.

“Not yet, it’s gonna be a surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Eddie says.

“That’s why I’m letting you know it’s coming,” Richie says. “Eventually.” He kisses Eddie on the forehead.

“Shit, they’re gonna get all competitive and race each other to it,” Bill says. “We know how you two operate.”

“Dueling proposals,” Bev agrees.

“What do you say, a double wedding?” Richie says, gesturing between him and Eddie and Ben and Bev. They both blush incredibly hard. “Come on, we know it’s gonna happen, he’s had a ring picked out since he was 14 years old.”

“Not quite that long,” Ben says, but he’s nodding, his cheeks pink.

“He knows my taste,” Bev just says, shrugging, pretending like it’s not a big deal, though her cheeks are equally blotchy. _So they’ve definitely had the conversation, even if neither of them has gotten down on one knee yet._ _Good._

“You got it all planned out, Benny?” Richie asks.

He nods. “Do you?”

“You know I’m not a planner,” Richie says.

“He does suck at it,” Eddie confirms.

“Hey, I have a question,” Mike says.

“What?”

“Are you going to write your own proposal or are you going to get your old ghostwriter to do it for you?”

Everyone howls with laughter.

They spend the weekend lazing around in the pool, eating barbecue, drinking, making dumb jokes, and generally having the best times of their lives. Neither Ben nor Richie proposes that weekend. Ben does it a few months later, though. On New Year’s Eve, because of course he does. The ring is a tasteful two-carat diamond with sapphires set around it. To match her eyes, because _of course._ It’s perfect, and Ben cries even more than she does when she says yes.

“Putting the pressure on,” Eddie says, when they get the group text.

“You can’t rush perfection, Eduardo,” Richie says.

“You still haven’t gotten around to planning it, have you?”

“No,” Richie says, and Eddie laughs fondly. But he’s lying. He does have a plan. There’s something else he has to do first.

He does it via tweet. “New Year’s Resolution: Come out of the closet. Hi everyone, I’m gay and was lying whenever I talked about eating pussy. Cool. I’m done for the year.” He follows it up with a rainbow flag emoji and hits send before he can think twice about it.

The response is overwhelmingly positive, just like Eddie said it would be. Mike sends a link to the tweet to the group chat almost immediately (of course he follows their official Twitters. He gets the notifications sent to his phone. Even for Richie, who fucking lives on that app and tweets his stream of consciousness. Mike’s devotion to keeping tabs on his friends is admirable and a little obsessive). Ben jokingly accuses Richie of stealing his thunder, but everyone says they’re proud and they love him, and so on.

The press gets a hold of the weird friendship between Richie and best-selling writer Bill Denborough, the famously handsome architect Ben Hanscom and his gorgeous and talented designer girlfriend-now-fiancee Beverly Marsh. They figure out that they’re all from Derry, Maine. Derry remains obscure. No one really remembers them as kids, and no one remembers or investigates the child murders. It’s like they never happened. Maybe it’s for the best.

Richie indulges his newly curious fans by posting photos of the six of the Losers from their weekend at Ben’s house. RPF fanfiction appears overnight, and everyone correctly guesses that it’s Eddie that Richie is ass over teakettle in love with. Mike gets quite a bit of attention too in his new role as a curator of a tiny history museum in Chicago, which is where he ended up. Museum attendance soars. The blog he maintains for it gets so popular once the public figures out he’s one of the six in Richie’s photo that the website crashes. He gets a few marriage proposals himself. He doesn’t accept any, but he does meet a nice woman that year.

Eddie by now is at a new risk assessment company out in LA, making pretty good money. Richie asks before outing him. Eddie doesn’t especially care what his finance bro clients think of him so of course he agrees. They start going to red carpet events together. They hold hands in public. It’s very cute.

When they go to Pride, Eddie flies a blue, pink, and purple flag. He foregoes the glitter, but Richie goes all out.

Bill and Audra patch things up and decide to start trying to have a kid. He’s really fucking nervous about it, but he’s got enough examples of what not to do (thanks, Mrs. Kaspbrak, Mr. Marsh, Mr. and Mrs. Tozier) that he figures it out. He names the baby girl Georgia. The book he wrote during the pregnancy features a pretty graphic description of a fetus eating its host from the inside out. Audra does not appreciate this. The critics actually like the ending for once.

Richie doesn’t do an elaborate, embarrassing public proposal like Eddie’d feared. It’s a quiet one, intimate. Not at all obnoxious. (They were both obnoxious. They recognized this and owned it.) He doesn’t do anything cheesy, or hark back to their time in Derry, though he’d considered and discarded using a fanny pack, inhaler, cleaning products, the Eddie-Bear, a Pomeranian, _Game of Thrones_ references, fortune cookies or Chinese food in general, _30 Rock,_ puns about risks, any mention of a clown or hospital whatsoever. He also avoided the usual suspects like Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, the Eiffel Tower, baseball games, basketball games, football games, hockey games, post-coital cuddling, and putting a lock on a bridge somewhere.

He does it over coffee. He hadn’t had a nightmare or any panic attacks, it hadn’t even been any particularly special day. He just makes a pot of coffee after dinner, before they’re about to go to bed, and they drink it sitting at the kitchen table, like they’d always done, and he pulls out the ring and asks. Eddie says yes. He goes into his briefcase and pulls out a ring of his own for Richie.

“I wasn’t sure you’d ever get around to it,” Eddie explains. Richie’s only offended for a second.

“I was prolonging the suspense,” he says. They put the rings on each other, and that’s pretty much it.

Richie does not wear a bright orange tux like Jim Carrey in _Dumb and Dumber_ for either Ben and Bev’s wedding or for his own, but he jokes about it all the same.

There was a Losers Club bet about when Richie would actually propose. Bill had said Eddie would do it first. Ben and Bev both overshot it. Mike came the closest, so he won the pot. The words “big gay in love with you” feature in Richie’s vows. It’s a small wedding, at the courthouse. None of them has any extended family, and they don’t really have friends close enough to share the occasion with, except the Losers, obviously. It’s just what they want.

 _OUT_ magazine gives Richie a cover photoshoot and interview for the release of his new Comedy Central special. He’s got one of those headbands that look like an arrow is being shot through his head. The arrow has a rainbow tip and rainbow fletches. Richie’s proud of how few dick jokes he makes in the interview. The special gets good reviews, for once in his life. They notice that the style is different, more mature, more introspective, less fratty. “He’s no Hannah Gadsby, but he’s pretty good,” one critic says. His audiences are noticeably different for this tour. He gets emails from gay kids thanking him, saying he gave them courage to come out to their friends or parents, like he’s a role model or something. It freaks him out. He doesn’t feel ready for that kind of responsibility. Not until some kid tells him that he’s from Maine, too, just outside of Derry. He remembers Adrian Mellon getting killed in a homophobic hate crime awhile back, and it scared him. But to have Eddie and Richie not only famous and from Maine but also openly gay married, it makes him want to come out too. He’s spent too long being afraid, he says. Does Richie think it’ll be OK?

Richie writes back and tells him he does. Everything will be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all are free to think what you want but the idea of Richie Tozier sitting motionless in a waiting room while Eddie is in surgery is laughable to me. Then I added some other stuff but that was the main thing. I have no idea what the canon is for character backgrounds, so if it's wrong don't tell me bc I read the book right after the 2016 election and had other things on my mind, and it fucks me up that if the first movie is in 1989 then the second is in the summer of 2016. Can you even imagine living through the demon clown shit and having to watch Donald Trump become president? Anyway, I hope you liked it.


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